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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

______, 20 _____

I,______, hereby submit this as part of the requirements for the degree of:

______in: ______It is entitled: ______

Approved by: ______

PUCCINI’S USE OF JAPANESE MELODIES IN MADAMA BUTTERFLY

A thesis submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

in the Division of Composition, Musicology, and Theory of the College-Conservatory of Music

2003

Kunio Hara

B.M., University of Cincinnati, 2000

Committee Chair: Dr. Hilary Poriss

ABSTRACT

One of the more striking aspects of exoticism in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is the extent

to which the composer incorporated Japanese musical material in his score. From the earliest

discussion of the work, musicologists have identified many Japanese melodies and musical

characteristics that Puccini used in this work. Some have argued that this approach indicates

Puccini’s preoccupation with creating an authentic Japanese setting within his opera; others have

maintained that Puccini wanted to produce an exotic atmosphere rather than an accurate musical

portrayal of Japan; still others have regarded Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies as a

manifestation of musical orientalism, a Western, privileged depiction of musically and culturally

foreign and inferior Others.

Although these studies represent important contributions to Puccini scholarship, many of

them fail to acknowledge the exceptional conditions of music production in Japan in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The goal of this study is to rectify this situation by

providing a reassessment, both cultural and analytic, of Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies that

takes into account the specific historic and cultural contexts in which these melodies emerged

and traveled to the composer’s hands. First, I will survey the existing research in order to outline the current comprehension and evaluation of Puccini’s adoption of Japanese music. Second, I will provide my own analyses of Puccini’s score in relation to contemporaneous musical activities in Japan in an attempt to situate the work within a larger cultural and historical

phenomenon of the musical exchange between Japan and the West. My analyses consist of three

chapters, each concerning Puccini’s use of a particular song or a collection of pieces in Madama

Butterfly. They are “Miyasan,” a popular Japanese military song from the early Meiji Era,

“Kimigayo,” the Japanese national anthem, and Nippon Gakufu, two volumes of piano arrangements of Japanese melodies by Rudolf Dittrich. Through this reassessment, I intend to direct critical attention to the intricate web of cultural connections that link Puccini’s opera to music of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japan.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1. BUTTERFLY’S SONGS 2

2. “MIYASAN” 23

3. “KIMIGAYO” 39

4. DITTRICH’S NIPPON GAKUFU 56

5. CONCLUSION 75

BIBLIOGRAPHY 83

APPENDIX

1. A SAMPLE OF NOTES FROM DITTRICH’S NIPPON GAKUFU 89

2. MUSICAL EXAMPLES 90

CHAPTER 1

BUTTERFLY’S SONGS

Despite its catastrophic opening night at La Scala in 1904, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

has continued to fascinate audiences and critics alike with its exotic musical appeal. Relying on

conventional musical devices that signified the Orient, Puccini assembled and studied collections

and recordings of Japanese music and consulted specialists, incorporating a significant number of authentic Japanese melodies within the opera. Since he did not reveal much information about

his borrowings, musicologists such as Mosco Carner, Kimiyo Powils-Okano, Arthur Groos, and

others have identified Japanese melodies, attempting to reconstruct his compositional process

and to interpret his use of these tunes.1 Some have argued that Puccini’s use of Japanese

melodies indicates his preoccupation with creating an authentic Japanese setting within his

opera; others have stressed the strong correlation between the symbolic meaning of the Japanese

songs and narrative of the opera; still others have regarded Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies as

1 Alfred Baresel, Giacomo Puccini: Leben und Werke (Hamburg: Hans Sikorski, 1954), 58–61, 70–2; Julian Budden, Puccini: His Life and Works, The Master Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 223–73; Georg Capellen, “Madame Butterfly und die Exotik,” Neue Musik-Zeitung 30 (1908–9): 465–8; Mosco Carner, “The Exotic Element in Puccini,” The Musical Quarterly 22 (1936): 45–67; idem, Puccini: A Critical Biography, 3d ed. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992), 409–52; Karl Gustav Fellerer, Giacomo Puccini (Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1937), 67–71; Michele Girardi, Puccini: His International Art, trans. Laura Basini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 195– 258; Arthur Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko: Japanese Music-Theater in Madama Butterfly,” Monumenta Nipponica 54 (1999): 41–73; Mary Renner Heath, “Exoticism in Puccini: The Japanese Melodies in Madama Butterfly,” The Opera Journal 21 (1980): 21–8; Duiti Miyasawa, “Madama Butterfly’s Original Melodies,” Opera News 16, no. 13 (1952): 7–9; and Kimiyo Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” Orpheus-Schriftenreihe zu Grundfragen der Musik, no. 44 (Bonn: Verlag für systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1986), 9–10, 44–62.

a manifestation of musical orientalism, a Western, privileged depiction of musically and culturally foreign and inferior Others.

Although these studies represent important contributions to Puccini scholarship, many of them fail to acknowledge the exceptional conditions of music production in Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The collapse of the feudal government, the Tokugawa shogunate, in 1867 and the dissolution of its rigidly regulated social structure caused ground- breaking shifts in traditional music of Japan, including the reintroduction of women on performing stages, the resurgence of court music (gagaku), and the decline of official patronage for nō theater. The new Meiji government’s ambitious program of modernization and

Westernization introduced Western art music, military band music, and music education into the fabric of Japanese society, causing fundamental changes in the musical landscape of Japan.2

Although some scholars tend to emphasize the authenticity of the melodies Puccini employed, the supposed Japanese music that he encountered in the early twentieth century was already a product of a complex cultural exchange between Japan and the West. Without considering these cultural and historic conditions of the music that Puccini adopted in his opera, our understanding of Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies and its musical and cultural implications, I believe, remains incomplete.

The goal of my thesis is to rectify this situation by providing a reassessment, both cultural and analytic, of Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies that takes into account the specific historic

2 New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., s. v. “Japan, § VI ‘Theatre Music,’ 1 ‘Nō’” by David Waterhouse,” and s. v. “Japan, § V ‘Court Music,’” by Allan Marett; and Satomi Oshio, “Gender Roles in the Performing Arts in Japan,” in East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea, vol. 7 of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, ed. Robert C. Provine, Yoshiko Tokumaru, and J. Lawrence Witzleben (New York: Routledge, 2002), 763–6.

and cultural contexts in which these melodies emerged and traveled to the composer’s hands.

Through this reassessment, I intend to direct critical attention to the intricate web of cultural connections that link Puccini’s opera to music of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century

Japan. In the remainder of this chapter, I will survey the existing research in order to outline the current comprehension and evaluation of Puccini’s adoption of Japanese music. I will then

provide my own analyses of Puccini’s score in relation to contemporaneous musical activities in

Japan in an attempt to situate the work within a larger cultural and historical phenomenon of the

musical exchange between Japan and the West. My analyses will consist of three chapters, each

dealing with Puccini’s use of a particular song or a collection of pieces in Madama Butterfly.

With this study, I hope to demonstrate a culturally informed understanding of Puccini’s use of

Japanese melodies as well as its complex musical and cultural implications.

The discussion of the significance of Puccini’s use of Japanese music in Madama

Butterfly began immediately following its premiere in 1904. Contemporary critics of the opera understood Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies as a response to audiences’ expectations of an appropriate depiction of local color and, to a lesser extent, of identifiable Japanese themes. A review of the opera’s opening-night performance informs us of the ways in which contemporary

Italian audiences and critics interpreted Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies:

The conflict between the American character and the Japanese one is provided by paraphrases of the American and Japanese national anthems…. The local color is obtained by hints and phrases of song and Japanese melodies.3

3 La Lombardia (Milan), translated in Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 68–9.

According to the reviewer, the Japanese (and American) musical elements provided not

only the “local color” of the opera, but also a musical commentary on the “conflict” between

Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San and their respective cultures. The New York audiences, having being

exposed to Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado (1885), had a slightly different perspective from their Italian counterparts. The following excerpt is from an article that appeared in the New York

Times on the day before the New York premiere of the English version of the opera at the

Garden Theatre:

Nobody, of course, can treat of a Japanese subject without yielding to the seduction of Japanese local color: and Mr. Puccini has so yielded…. For Japanese color he has employed a number of Japanese themes, and one of them will be recognized by admirers of “The Mikado” as an old friend which Sir Arthur Sullivan made use of there. They may thus assure themselves that it is really Japanese color they are enjoying. There are other themes not national but purely emotional in character of various types of expression, and used always with the suggestive purpose of leading motives.4

The “old friend” the reviewer referred to is the Japanese song “Miyasan” (宮さん々々)

that Sullivan had adopted in his operetta.5 His comment that those who recognize the tune from

4 Richard Aldrich, “Puccini’s Madame Butterfly,” New York Times, 11 November 1906, IV: 5.

5 For a detailed discussion of Sullivan’s use of “Miyasan” or “Miya-sama,” see Michael Beckerman, “The Sword on the Wall: Japanese Elements and their Significance in The Mikado,” The Musical Quarterly 73 (1989): 303–19. One of the problems I faced while navigating through the literature on the subject is the inconsistency among the authors in their method of transliterations of the titles of Japanese songs. Throughout this thesis, when the titles of Japanese songs and collections appear the first time, I will identify them in transliteration based on the Hepburn system and in Japanese in order to avoid confusion. Subsequent references to Japanese songs and publications are made only in transliterations. I chose the Hepburn system of transliteration because it is widely used in Japanese studies and ethnomusicological literature about Japanese music in the English-speaking community. Bibliographic information for Japanese books will include information in both Japanese and English, which is also a common practice in Japanese studies and ethnomusicology.

the operetta can be “assured” of the authenticity of Japanese local color seems to indicate that

American audiences had a preconceived notion of what Japanese music sounded like. In terms of the relationship between music and drama, the author explicitly cites Puccini’s use of “leading motives,” or leitmotifs. Although not all audiences, especially the Japanese and Westerners familiar with Japanese customs, were convinced of the opera’s realism, early scholars, such as

Georg Capellen and Mosco Carner, share both reviewers’ opinions that Puccini effectively established Japanese local color through the use of what they considered to be authentic Japanese melodies and that these and other motives serve specific dramatic purposes.

Capellen begins his article “Madame Butterfly und die Exotik” by writing that he has

“not seen any other opera in which the exotic milieu was musically depicted so accurately and uniformly.”6 He supports his argument by discussing characteristic aspects of Japanese music and points out that Puccini’s score contains many of these traits: melodies based on pentatonic scales with half steps and sequential melodic fragments outlining a tritone (Tritonusfolge).

Capellen identifies the authenticity of three Japanese melodies that Puccini employed, “Ha-Uta”

(端唄), “Sakura” (さくら), and “Miyasan,” based on his study of European and Japanese sources including Rudolf Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu and the Collection of Japanese Koto Music.7

6 Capellen, “Madame Butterfly,” 465: “Ich habe noch keine exotische Oper gehört, die fremdartiges Milieu musikalisch so stilecht und einheitlich durchfürt.”

7 Rudolf Dittrich, Nippon Gakufu: sechs japanische Volkslieder/Six Japanese Popular Songs (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1894); Tokyo Academy of Music/Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō 東京音楽学校, Collection of Japanese Koto Music/Sōkyokushū 筝曲集 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō, 1888); Rudolf Lange, “Lieder aus der japanischen Volksschule,” Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin 3 (1900): 192–215; Shūji Isawa 伊沢修二, Shōgaku shōka 小学唱歌 (Songs for elementary school), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Dainippon Tosho, 1892); Capellen, Shogaku Shoka: Japanische Volksmelodien des Isawa Shuji als

He analyzes Puccini’s harmonic settings of the melodies, and most significant, he indicates the

similarity between Dittrich and Puccini’s settings of “Sakura.” He also observes that Puccini

associates Japanese melodies and motives with Japanese characters (“Miyasan” with Yamadori), objects (“Sakura” with Cio-Cio-San’s knick-knacks), and ceremonies (“Suiryō-bushi” [推量節] with Cio-Cio-San’s suicide).8 Although Capellen’s discussion of Japanese music is

oversimplified and not always accurate, his article contains many important insights about the

opera, such as Puccini’s likely sources of Japanese music.9 It also had an enormous influence on

Carner’s studies of the opera, which relies on much of the information Capellen presents.

Mosco Carner’s article “The Exotic Element in Puccini’s Operas,” appearing more than

two-and-a-half decades after Capellen’s study, is one of the earliest examples of scholarly

literature on the topic in English.10 The scope of this article is much larger than Capellen’s:

Carner addresses three of Puccini’s exotic operas, Madama Butterfly, La fanciulla del West, and

Turandot in terms of melody, harmony, rhythm, and orchestration. In light of the recent

Charakterstücke für Klavier (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1904). Capellen draws music for “Ha- Uta” and “Sakura” from Dittrich’s collection and the Collection of Japanese Koto Music. He obtains the text of “Miyasan” from Lange’s article. He also made piano arrangements of the songs from Isawa’s Shogaku Shoka, which included “Miyasan.”

8 Capellen does not identify “Suiryō-bushi” with its name, but refers to it as an instrumental melody “derived from the Chinese pentatonic scale.” Capellen, “Madame Butterfly,” 467. Powils-Okano identifies the song with its proper name. (Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 57–8.)

9 One of the inaccuracies of Capellen’s article of pertains to his analysis of “Miyasan.” He argues that it is set in one of the “Japanese” pentatonic scale containing half steps, but in fact the piece does not have any half step intervals. He also uses terminologies derived from Japanese music theory such as “Ryosen” and “Ritsusen” to refer to Chinese scales.

10 Carner, “The Exotic Element,” 45–7.

discussion about musical orientalism inspired by Edward Said’s work, Carner’s accounts of

“exotic music” seem extremely oversimplified, grouping vastly diverse musical styles (Japanese,

African-American, Native American, and Chinese) under a single category.11 He does, however,

make a distinction between the imitation of exotic musical styles and the construction of perceived musical styles of exotic places. Carner observes both approaches in Puccini’s operas including the use of Japanese pentatonic scales and seven authentic Japanese melodies in

Madama Butterfly. His discussion of the operas in this article remains purely musical for the most part, rarely indicating the dramatic consequences of these musical devices. The evaluation of the dramatic significance of these Japanese melodies and other themes, however, becomes one focus in his discussion of the opera in his seminal work on Puccini’s life and operas, Puccini: A

Critical Biography.12

Although critics and scholars before him had commented sporadically on the relationship

between Puccini’s music and the dramatic context of the opera, Carner, in his biography,

provides the first systematic analysis of the opera’s themes and recurring motifs. Much of the article’s information about Puccini’s borrowings remains intact in his biography, but in the latter work he ascribes specific characters, objects, events, and meanings to the Japanese melodies: the

“Japanese National Anthem” (“Kimigayo”/君が代) is associated with the arrival of Japanese officials, “My Prince” (“Miyasan”) with Yamadori, “Japanese Folk Song” (“Takai Yama”/高い

11 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978).

12 Carner, Puccini, 409–52.

山) with Suzuki’s prayer, and so on.13 His discussion also includes an analysis of smaller

melodic fragments that are not necessarily quotations, but are constructed on characteristic

Japanese melodic patterns, which he names “The Father’s Suicide” or “The Sword and Curse.”14

Although Carner presents a comprehensive picture of exoticism in Madama Butterfly,

one of the troublesome aspects of his studies is the way in which he identifies Japanese melodies.

Out of the eight Japanese melodies that he alludes to in Puccini, he labels only three of them

with their proper titles: “Cherry-Blossom Song” (“Sakura”), “The Nihon Bashi” (“O-Edo

Nihonbashi”/お江戸日本橋), and “My Prince.” The rest he refers to with generic names such as

“Japanese National Anthem,” “Japanese Folk Song,” and “Japanese Classical Music.”15 He indicates that he has identified these songs from Capellen’s Shogaku Shoka and Dittrich’s

Nippon Gakufu, but he does not provide specific pages or the titles of the songs in these collections, thus making it difficult to verify his claims.

The inaccuracy and vagueness of his discussion are, perhaps, manifestations of Carner’s unfamiliarity with Japanese music.16 For him and for most of his intended American and

13 In his biography, Carner replaced one of the Japanese melodies from his article, “Japanese Military-Drill Song” (“Shōtai”/小隊) with another “Japanese Folk Song” (“Takai Yama”). Compare “The Exotic Element,” 51 and Puccini, 415. Carner refers to most of the Japanese melodies he discusses with loosely translated titles in English. The original titles of the Japanese melodies are in parentheses.

14 Ibid., Puccini, 419.

15 Ibid., 415.

16 The only ethnomusicological source on Japanese music that Carner cites is Otto Abraham and Erich von Hornbostel, “Studien über das Tonsystem und die Musik der Japaner,” Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft 4 (1902): 302–60.

European readers in the mid-twentieth century, the Japanese melodies did not carry any specific

meanings or connotations except those that Puccini established in his opera. Duiti Miyasawa, a

Japanese journalist working in the United States who recognized and discussed some of

Puccini’s use of musical quotations, also expressed a similar opinion, writing, “Puccini used

Japanese music for atmosphere only.”17 In his book Puccini: His Life and Works, Julian Budden

maintains the same standpoint, reminding his readers that they do well to hear the melodies

through “Western ears.”18 In that sense, Carner’s approach is justified in that the accuracy of

information does not matter since most audience members grasped Puccini’s quotations as

ornamental elements that added to the Japanese color of the opera. On the other hand, scholars

such as Kimiyo Powils-Okano and Arthur Groos recognized a close relationship between the

Japanese music and the plot of the opera and sought evidence of Puccini’s encounter with

Japanese music.

In Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” one of the first influential scholarly studies and a

response to Carner’s biography, Powils-Okano discusses the symbolic meanings of eleven of the

Japanese melodies that Puccini used in his opera and their relationship to its plot. Unlike her

predecessors, Powils-Okano’s research focused on the sources that may have been available to

17 Miyasawa, “Madama Butterfly’s Original Melodies,” 8. He provides some important facts including possible sources that Puccini consulted and people Puccini contacted. Although these discussions are terse, he has provided the groundwork for subsequent scholars. He also provides background information for some of the songs that he recognizes for those readers unfamiliar with them.

18 Budden, Puccini, 243. “Be it noted, however, that the native melodies are heard strictly through Western ears and their expressive possibilities exploited accordingly.”

Puccini at the time that he was working on Madama Butterfly. Although Miyasawa discussed

Puccini’s encounters with Ōyama Hisako 大山久子 (1879–1955), the wife of the Japanese

ambassador to Italy, Powils-Okano further stressed the role that Ōyama played in Puccini’s

understanding of the Japanese melodies. Ōyama visited Puccini several times, providing him

with valuable information about Japanese music and culture, and she performed some Japanese

music on the koto. She also made arrangements for Japanese scores and recordings to be sent to

Italy, as well as loaning Puccini several recordings from her own collection.19 Although in

comparison to Carner’s biography, her study seems to be more solidly grounded on concrete evidence, the credibility of the information that she gives, as Groos demonstrates, is

questionable.20 Before I further discuss Gross’s argument against Powils-Okano’s findings, I will

take a closer look at her analysis of a Japanese piece in relation to the opera to demonstrate the

problems with her research.

During the interaction among Pinkerton, Sharpless, Cio-Cio-San, and her relatives following Cio-Cio-San’s entrance in Act I, Sharpless asks Cio-Cio-San about the health of her father. A stark, ominous melody in the woodwinds accompanies Cio-Cio-San’s laconic answer,

“morto” (dead), which, according to Powils-Okano, has multiple connections to the koto piece

19 Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 47–9. The Japanese sources that Powils- Okano discusses are: Iwai Nagai 永井岩井 and Kenpachirō Kobatake 小畠賢八郎, A Collection of Japanese Popular Musics [sic]/Seiyō gakufu nippon zokkyoku shū 西洋楽譜日本俗曲集, Fashionable Edition (Osaka: S. Miki, 1891); Tokyo Academy of Music/Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō 東京音楽学校, Collection of Japanese Koto Music/Sōkyokuhū 筝曲集 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō, 1888); Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari 音楽取調掛, Chūgaku shōka 中学唱歌 (Songs for middle school) (Tokyo: Monbushō, 1901); and idem., Yōchien shōkashū 幼稚園唱歌集 (Collection of songs for kindergarten) (Tokyo: Monbushō, 1887).

20 See Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 34, 52, 64.

“Ume no haru” 梅の春 (Spring of Plum Blossoms).21 Although there is no documented evidence that Puccini knew this piece, she argues, based on the similarities between the melodic contours of the two melodies, that Puccini heard this koto piece during one of Ōyama’s performances.

Comparing Powils-Okano’s transcription of “Ume no haru” and Puccini’s adaptation of it, which she calls “Verbannungsmotiv” (exile motive), we can see that the opening gestures of the two melodies have a very similar contour that dips from C to B and then rises to E (see Example 1).

The melodic shapes of the following phrases also share common features, but the phrase in

Puccini’s supposed adaptation begins on C, a fifth lower than that of “Ume no haru.” The rhythmic qualities of the two melodies are, on the other hand, very different: while frequent syncopations obscure the downbeats in “Ume no haru,” the metric organization in Puccini’s melody is very clear. This author also notes a less evident textual connection between the two melodies.

Powils-Okano discusses the symbolism of the plum blossom, which in Japanese culture is typically associated with the ninth-century scholar and poet, Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真

(845–903), and its significance in Puccini’s opera. According to her, Michizane, a successful and powerful government official enjoying the favor of the emperor, was exiled from the capital at the height of his career and died on a remote island of Japan. The plum blossom was the favorite flower of this unfortunate poet, and she claims that the flower invokes, to this day, the story of his exile in every Japanese mind. The title of the koto piece “Ume no haru” contains the word

21 Reference to the score is made to Giacomo Puccini, Madama Butterfly: in Full Score (Milan: G. Ricordi, 1907; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1990). The Roman numeral refers to the act and the Arabic numeral to the rehearsal number. In this version, the composer divided the second act into two parts.

“plum” (ume), which, for Powils-Okano, signifies the idea of “exile.” She observes that the melody supposedly based on “Ume no haru” also embodies the related ideas of exile, rejection,

isolation, and suicide. The “Verbannungsmotiv” appears multiple times in Act I when Cio-Cio-

San talks about her father to Pinkerton, when Goro explains the nature of his death (suicide) to

Pinkerton, when Cio-Cio-San rejects her ancestral religion, when her relatives disown her due to

her conversion to Christianity, and when she reflects on her abandonment. It also appears for the

last time during the final scene of the opera when she commits suicide.22

Although Powils-Okano here constructs a very intriguing analysis of the opera based on

her insights about Japanese culture and resources that were not available to scholars previously,

we must take her discussion and conclusion that she draws from it with some reservations.23 First, her argument is based on the premise that Puccini received a considerable amount of information about Japanese music and culture from Ōyama, which is extremely difficult to prove or to assess.

Moreover, as discussed above, the melodic resemblances between “Ume no haru” and the

22 Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 59–60. In the first three versions (Milan 1904, Brescia 1904, and London 1905), Cio-Cio-San throws away a Buddhist figurine during her conversation with Pinkerton, marking her rejection of her ancestral religion. In the final version (Paris 1906), Puccini replaced Cio-Cio-San’s gesture with an open declaration of her love to Pinkerton, but the music remained the same.

23 Her information about Michizane is mostly accurate, but it can profit from further explanation of the story of the plum blossom around the legend of Michizane. Upon departing from his home in Kyoto, popular legend says that Michizane recited the following poem to his favorite plum tree in his garden: “When the east wind blows/let it send your fragrance,/oh plum blossoms./Although your master is gone,/do not forget the spring.” Soon after his exile, Michizane died from a disease and a series of natural disasters attacked the imperial capital. Those who were responsible for Michizane’s exile feared his curse and begun to worship him as a deity. Today, reflecting his great achievement in Chinese classical literature, he is worshipped chiefly as a deity of academic success. [Robert Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court, Harvard East Asian Monographs, no. 120 (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1986).]

“Verbannungsmotiv,” beyond the opening measure or two, are not very convincing. She

attributes the discrepancies between the original and Puccini’s adaptation to his lack of access to a written source and his reliance on memory of Ōyama’s performance. She also bases her elaborate theory about the relationship between the symbolism of “Ume no haru” and that of

Puccini’s melody on the assumption that Ōyama communicated these meanings to Puccini.

Second, the following lines from her discussion make clear that the relationship between the plum blossom and Michizane’s exile, on which her argument hinges, is based on a broad generalization of the Japanese mindset: “Among Japanese, it is a famous fact that the plum blossom is the favorite flower of an aristocrat named Sugawara no Michizane…. The association of the plum blossom and Michizane’s exile survives until today in the memory of every Japanese person.”24 As if aware of the limitations of her claim, she adds the following sentence: “For me

as a Japanese person, the assignment of ‘Ume no haru’ to ‘exile’ and ‘hara-kiri’ absolutely makes sense.”25 Powils-Okano uses dubious suppositions and subjective insights presented as

objective facts to support her discussion, equating her personal reaction to an essential Japanese

one.

In the wake of the recent revival of scholarly literature on Puccini’s music, Powils-

Okano’s study provided important information and pointed out directions for further research. In

his biography Puccini: His International Art, Michele Girardi relies almost exclusively on

24 “Unter Japanern ist es eine bekannte Tatsache, daß die Pflaumenblüte die Lieblingsblüte eines Adligen namens Sugawara no Michizane (845–903) war.… Die Assoziation zwischen Pflaumenblüte und Michizanes Verbannung hat sich bis heute im Gedächtnis jades Japaners erhalten.” (Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 60.)

25 “Für mich als Japanerin ist die Zuordnung des ‘Ume no haru’ zu ‘Verbannung’ un ‘Harakiri’ durchaus einleuchtend.” (Ibid., 60.)

Powils-Okano’s information about Puccini’s sources and borrowings, reprinting ten melodies

from her list, including “Ume no haru.”26 Despite his reservations with Powils-Okano’s

interpretations of the relationships between the symbolic meanings of the melodies and the opera,

he too oversimplifies his analyses.27 In his retelling of Powils-Okano’s story of Michizane, he

characterizes the legendary scholar as “a favorite of the Emperor [who was] then banished and

forced to commit hara-kiri.”28 Although this condensed version of the tale gives itself immediate

relevancy to the plot of the opera, in which Cio-Cio-San’s father commits hara-kiri at the order

of the emperor and Cio-Cio-San herself stabs herself to death, Powils-Okano did not reveal the cause of Michizane’s death.29 Furthermore, the custom of seppuku or ceremonial suicide of self-

disembowelment, otherwise known as hara-kiri, was widely practiced among the warrior class during the feudal period of Japan much later than Michizane’s time.30 The “ancient” ritual

suicide, after all, is not as old as Girardi seems to believe.

While Girardi adopted much of Powils-Okano’s argument and information without much

critical assessment, Arthur Groos, in his article “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko: Japanese Music-

Theater in Madama Butterfly,” repeatedly points out the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in

26 Girardi, Puccini, 212–5.

27 Ibid., 212–3. “The present transcription does not follow the exact order of the book from which it is derived, since the association of certain ideas, although brilliant, is forced and sometimes imprecise” (emphasis mine).

28 Ibid., 216.

29 Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 60. Robert Borgen suggests natural causes for his death. (Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane, 304.)

30 Encyclopaedia Britannica Micropaedia Ready Reference and Index, s.v. “hara-kiri.”

Powils-Okano’s study. In this article, he carefully locates many of the pieces listed by Powils-

Okano in Nagai’s collection of Japanese songs with specific page numbers, though he is unable find “Ume no haru” in any of the sources he consulted and questions Powils-Okano’s conclusions.31 One of the shocking claims he makes is that the source from which she cited

“Ume no haru,” Collection of Japanese Koto Music (1888), does not contain the piece. This revelation severely undermines the credibility of Powils-Okano’s argument, which Groos further attacks by questioning her access to these sources.32

Budden also challenges the validity of Powils-Okano’s conclusions, but in a more oblique manner than Groos. As a critique of Girardi’s retelling of the story of Michizane, he cautions his readers from reading too much into the meanings and original contexts of the

Japanese melodies, declaring that the character of the Japanese melodies’ “original texts bears no relation to the use Puccini makes of them.” For him, the Japanese melodies are exotic additions to Puccini’s diverse melodic and harmonic palate. He suggests that “native melodies are heard strictly through Western ears and their expressive possibilities exploited accordingly.” 33 In his footnote at the end of this passage, Budden cites Girardi’s discussion of “Ume no haru” without any further explanation, alluding to his doubts about the connections between the original lyrics of the melodies and Puccini’s score.

On a more positive side, Powils-Okano’s work has enriched Puccini scholarship by raising the possibility of locating the sources that Puccini consulted and examining them in order

31 Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 64.

32 Ibid., 47, 51–2.

33 Budden, Puccini, 243.

to understand his process of borrowing. The main problem with her approach is her tendency to

present unexamined, intuitive ideas based on her insights as a Japanese person, such as a typical

Japanese person’s cultural response to the plum blossom, as factual information. I am not

necessarily criticizing the subjective position that she takes in discussing Puccini’s music: her

familiarity with and ability to access Japanese culture and sources have illuminated many aspects

of the opera that were not previously known. My thesis is, in part, to further her project of

introducing information drawn from Japanese sources and history into the scholarship. I am,

however, questioning her argument that assumes uniform and monolithic reactions from every

Japanese person encountering certain melodies. Because of varying historical, cultural, and educational backgrounds, not all Japanese are equally familiar with the legend of Michizane or his association with plum blossoms, not to mention the piece “Ume no haru” itself. Girardi perpetuates the error of simplifying the complex history and customs of Japan to produce a more viable story that supports his argument, which adds, unfortunately, to the Western stereotype of the Orient as a culture obsessed with cruelty and violence.34 Budden’s choice to avoid the question of Japanese meanings in the opera moves away from the impulse to essentialize; however, it does not give a complete picture of the opera and its reception. He seems to assume that the present “Western ears” hear the “native melodies” as they did a century ago and ignores the historic specificities that shaped the ways in which Western audiences reacted to Japanese music. Furthermore, Budden’s discussion excludes the reactions and experiences of people who do not necessarily or exclusively possess “Western ears” or who are familiar with Japanese

34 Ralph P. Locke, “Reflections on Orientalism in Opera and Musical Theater,” Opera Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1994): 56.

music. Since the 1920s, the opera has been performed in Japan and other parts of East Asia.

Although Powils-Okano’s exclusive reliance on her Japanese insights can be problematic,

discussing the Japanese aspects of the opera solely on their own terms without taking into

consideration the various cultural and social forces that guided Puccini and his collaborators is

equally blinding.

Taking a cue from Edward Said’s Orientalism, many musicologists have examined the

implications of colonialism, imperialism, and racism in the Western musical tradition, especially

in opera, providing new insights into the understanding of works such as Carmen, Samson et

Delila, and Lakmé.35 Among them, Arthur Groos has addressed Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in a

series of articles published during the last decade and a half, focusing on the historical context

and cultural implication of the opera. These include a historical investigation of the actual

models for John Luther Long’s short story, which became the basis of David Belasco’s play,

“Madame Butterfly,” that Puccini saw; a textual criticism of the changing characterization of

Pinkerton as a racist hero in the four versions of the opera’s libretto; the opera’s early reception in pre-World War II Japan; and the reception of a Japanese theatrical troupe in turn-of-the- century Europe and its influence on the opera.36

35 Ibid., 48–64; Idem., “Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila,” Cambridge Opera Journal 3 (1991): 261–302; James Parakilas, “The Soldier and the Exotic: Operatic Variations on a Theme of Racial Encounter,” Opera Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1994): 33–56 and no. 3 (1994): 43–69; Jonathan Bellman, ed., The Exotic in Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998); Susan McClary, Georges Bizet: “Carmen.” Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

36 In addition to the previously mentioned article “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” Groos has published the following articles: “Lieutenant F. B. Pinkerton: Problems in the Genesis of an

Groos’s aim to historically contextualize the work distinguishes him from other scholars

who studied the opera. For example, in his article “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” he

painstakingly reconstructs the performances by the Japanese theatrical troupe lead by Kawakami

Otojirō during their European tour.37 Kawakami Otojirō was an important character in the

Japanese theater at the turn of the century, developing a new style of drama in his quest to modernize the traditional kabuki theater. He led a successful tour of the United States and in

Europe from 1900 to 1902, performing a repertoire based not on his innovative, topical plays, but on traditional kabuki numbers adapted or abridged in order to appeal to Western audiences. In order to communicate the content of the plays to audiences, who did not understand Japanese,

Kawakami and his troupes minimized the plots, employed exaggerated facial expressions and gestures, and inserted dances and highly choreographed battle sequences. They frequently, upon request, appended scenes of hara-kiri to plays originally without them. Despite their flexible approach to Japanese traditional theater, their performances were received as authentic and accurate representations of Japanese drama. One of the most frequently noted aspects of the

Kawakami ensemble’s performances was the acting, dancing, and musical performances of the lead actress and Kawakami’s wife, Sadayakko. Although she was not trained as an actress—the seventeenth-century ban on female public performance was lifted only in 1877—her former

Operatic Hero,” The Puccini Companion, ed. William Weaver and Simonetta Puccini (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994): 161–92; “Return of the Native: Japan in Madama Butterfly/Madama Butterfly in Japan,” Cambridge Opera Journal 1 (1989): 167–94; “Madama Butterfly: The Story,” Cambridge Opera Journal 3 (1991): 125–58; “The Lady Vanished: The Lost Act of Madama Butterfly,” Opera News 59, no. 8 (1995): 16–9.

37 Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 41–73.

career as a geisha provided her opportunities to master Japanese dance (nihon buyō) and music.38

Sadayakko seems to have made a particularly strong impression on Puccini, who may have witnessed the play in Milan in March 1902.39

Groos’s discussion of Puccini’s use of the traditional koto piece “Echigo-Jishi” begins

with an account of Sadayakko’s performance of the piece in Kesa gozen. His research points out that even before Puccini’s opera, some Japanese pieces such as “Echigo-Jishi” were familiar to some Milanese theatergoers. Unlike Powils-Okano and Girardi, who discuss the same tune in terms of the composer’s supposed symbolism, Groos analyzes what the tune meant for a specific audience that was familiar with Sadayakko’s performance. By studying contemporary reviews of the Japanese troupe, he is able to extract certain recurring themes in their reactions and provide their view of Japanese theater based on the Kawakami troupe’s performances. Groos also discusses reactions to Puccini’s opera with this framework in mind, pointing out that Puccini and his audiences shared a notion of Japanese music and drama that was historically and culturally specific and not necessarily shared by modern Western audiences as Budden hypothesizes.

Adaptation of postcolonial criticism, however, is not without its problems. Paul Robinson

points out the weaknesses in Said’s application of his theory to Aida, which relied heavily on a

reading of the opera as a text and ignored much of Verdi’s actual compositional processes of the

opera.40 Groos’s emphasis on historical context, however, moves away from broad

38 Yoko Chiba, “Sada Yacco and Kawakami: Performers of Japonisme,” Modern Drama 35 (1992): 35–53.

39 Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 49.

40 Paul Robinson, “Is Aida an Orientalist Opera?” Cambridge Opera Journal 5 (1993): 133–40.

generalizations about the work as well as about that of the political and cultural relationships

between Japan and the West. Rather than regarding Madama Butterfly as Puccini’s expression of

imperialist ideals, Groos describes a variety of historic and cultural conditions that motivated

Puccini and his collaborators to shape and reshape the work in certain ways that caused Western

and Japanese audiences to react differently.

In the following chapters, I will reexamine some of Puccini’s uses of Japanese melodies

in Madama Butterfly that have been discussed by scholars, and I will introduce a few that have

yet to be discussed. In chapter 2, I will compare two sources containing different versions of a

Japanese song “Miyasan” that existed at the time of Puccini’s composition and attempt to determine which of the two was the more likely model for Puccini’s work. In addition, I will propose a reading for this song as an alternative to Powils-Okano and Budden’s discussions. In chapter 3, I will investigate the checkered history of the genesis of the Japanese national anthem,

“Kimigayo,” in order to understand how Western music and musicians helped define Japan’s

national identity in Western terms. The chapter will also comment on Puccini’s use of the song

within Madama Butterfly, which, I will suggest, serves to exclude Cio-Cio-San from Japan’s

Westernized modernity. In chapter 4, I will demonstrate the relationship between Nippon

Gakufu, two collections of piano arrangements of Japanese music by an Austrian composer

Rudolf Dittrich, and the opera. Although Dittrich’s music had a significant impact on Puccini’s

score, systematic examination of the music from within these collections and Puccini’s opera has

not been conducted since Capellen and Carner’s studies.

Following Groos’s model, I will divide my study equally between explicating the

historical contexts of the Japanese melodies under discussion and musical analyses of Puccini’s

score. Rather than exploring the reception of Japanese music in Europe around the turn of the

twentieth century, I will devote my attention primarily to investigating the musical life in Japan

during the late nineteenth century in an attempt to situate Puccini’s borrowed melodies within the

context of Japanese history. In Japan at the turn of the twentieth century, Western music had a

significant impact not only on Japan’s music, but also on its politics and educational system. One

of my objectives is to point out the irony that what many Europeans and Americans have

traditionally perceived as Japanese music was, in fact, heavily influenced by Western traditions. I

hope, therefore, to question some of the notions and premises regarding the characterization of

Japanese music and the distinction between Japanese and Western music that are fundamental in

discussions of Madama Butterfly. In my analysis of Puccini’s opera, I will discuss the

relationship between the libretto and music to some extent, but I will restrict most of my critical

attention to the composer’s musical characterization of Cio-Cio-San. In his discussion of Cio-

Cio-San’s aria “Io segue il mio destin” and the scene preceding it in Act I, Groos suggests that

Puccini juxtaposes “Eastern melos and Western aria structures” in order to portray Cio-Cio-San’s

“essentialized Japanese nature and her desire to assume an American identity.”41 I will elaborate

on Groos’s observation by analyzing Puccini’s musical portrayals of Cio-Cio-San that feature

Japanese music and that demonstrate her internal struggle for self-definition.

41 Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 68.

CHAPTER 2

“MIYASAN”

Puccini set “Miyasan,” a popular military song from the Meiji Period (1868–1912), more

than once, varying the harmony and orchestration of each setting and ascribing different dramatic

significations to it. Puccini’s multiple settings of this particular song provide an opportunity to

compare how the composer orchestrated, harmonized, and made use of the recurring motive.

Many scholars, including Carner, Powils-Okano, and Budden, discuss the significance of the

repeated appearances of this tune. Surprisingly, however, they disagree on some of the

fundamental aspects of the original version of the song: namely its title, actual notes, and rhythmic organization (see Examples 2a, 2b, 2c, and 2d). Many of these inconsistencies seem to have derived from simple mistakes such as misspellings of Japanese words or faulty musical transcriptions; however, melodic and textual variations are also characteristic of popular and folk melodies. In fact, at least two printed versions of “Miyasan,” found in collections of Japanese song Seiyō gakufu nippon zokkyoku shū (1891) and Shōgaku shōka (1892), existed by the late nineteenth century (see Example 3a and 3b). A modern collection of Japanese songs, Nihon no uta 日本の歌 (Japanese songs), contains yet another variation of the popular song, attesting to its longevity and ever-changing nature (see Example 4).1 The information about the song that these

scholars present, therefore, differs according to the sources they consulted, not because they

claim that Puccini appropriated one version of the song or the other.

1 Kyōichi Shiiba 椎葉京一, ed., Nihon no 日本の歌 (Japanese songs), vol. 1 Meiji- Taishō 明治：大正 (Tokyo: Nobarasha, 1998), 9.

In order to evaluate accurately and understand Puccini’s use of “Miyasan,” however, it is

crucial to identify the version or versions of the song with which he was familiar. In an attempt to address this question, I will provide some background information pertaining to this song, comparing Puccini’s score with two versions located in contemporary Japanese song collections.

Drawing on this comparison, I will propose a title and musical representation of the song most appropriate for the study of the opera. In the second part of this study, I will explain how Puccini manipulates the tune in order to achieve specific dramatic effects in its harmonic setting and

orchestration. Finally, I will demonstrate how Puccini’s various settings of “Miyasan” reflect his

shifting portrayal of Cio-Cio-San from a naïve “child bride” to a “tragic woman.”2

The song “Miyasan” is closely linked to the civil war, also known as the Boshin Conflict

(1868–9), which marked a major turning point in the history of Japan. In the second half of the

nineteenth century, the Tokugawa shogunate, a feudal government which had ruled Japan since

1603, was facing increasing external and internal crises. In 1854 the American expedition lead

by Commodore Matthew C. Perry succeeded in negotiating a treaty, which secured rights for

American steam liners and whalers to harbor in select Japanese ports. The United States’ further

negotiation with Japan granted them trade with Japanese merchants in these ports. The

Tokugawa shogunate in effect abandoned its long-standing isolationist policy dating back to the

early seventeenth century, and other Western powers flocked to Japan in order to make trade

2 Carner, Puccini, 414.

agreements and to find new markets.3 To some of the local leaders of the southern domains in

Japan, especially those of Satsuma, Chōshū, and Tosa, the shogunate’s dealings with Western

nations appeared incompetent and even threatening to national security. The imperial court in

Kyoto at this time was a nominal but a significant institution legitimizing the shogunate’s

authority over Japan. The leaders of the Satsuma, Chōshū, and Tosa clans recognized the

symbolic potential of the emperor and allied themselves with the anti-shogunate faction in the

imperial court. In 1867 their alliance proposed a reform that called for the dissolution of the

Tokugawa shogunate and reorganization of the Japanese government to shogun Yoshinobu. He accepted the proposal, but refused to the imperial order to turn his lands over to the imperial court. In January 1868, as a demonstration of his protest, the shogun marched to Kyoto with his troops and clashed with the Satsuma and Chōshū’s loyalist army. Their enemies overwhelmed

Yoshinobu’s soldiers, forcing them to retreat to Edo, now Tokyo, where the shogunate was based.

Within two weeks, Yoshinobu surrendered Edo, but the conflict continued until May 1869 between the loyalist army and the supporters of the shogunate.4

“Miyasan” is a song that the soldiers of the Satsuma clan are said to have sung during

their march northward from Kyoto to Edo during this conflict. The song seems to have

maintained its popularity among the soldiers long after the war; more than two decades later, in

1891, it appeared in Western notation in Seiyō gakufu nippon zokkyoku shū, a collection of

popular songs selected by a military bandmaster Ywai Nagai and transcribed by a member of his

3 W. G. Beasley, “The Foreign Threat and the Opening of the Ports,” in The Nineteenth Century, vol. 5 of The Cambridge History of Japan, ed. Marius B. Jansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 259–307.

4 Marius B. Jansen, “The Meiji Restoration,” in The Nineteenth Century, 308–66.

band, Kenpachirō Kobatake.5 In this collection, the title of the piece appears both in Japanese (宮

様々々/みやさんみやさん) and in transliteration (MIYASAN). Nagai and Kobatake provide a

performance indication (Allegro Moderato) and include two verses under the music. The

following year, Shūji Isawa included this song in his collection of educational songs, Shōgaku

Shōka.6 Unlike Nagai and Kobatake, Isawa identifies this version of the song only by the

Japanese title, but gives the name of the lyricist, Shinagawa Yajirō 品川弥二郎. Isawa’s naming of the lyricist seems odd for a popular military song; in fact, by the mid twentieth century, not only the lyrics, but also the melody had an attribution.7 It seems as the song became older and more famous, historians and publishers recognized the need to identify the creators.

The two versions’ lyrics have few minor inconsistencies, but they both reflect the historical circumstances of the origins of the song. Shinagawa’s text reads:

Miyasan miyasan, onma no mae de Chira chira suru no wa nanjai na. Toko ton’yare ton’yarena.

Are wa chōteki seibatsu seyo to no

5 Nagai Iwai and Kobatake Kenpachirō, A Collection of Japanese Popular Musics/Seiyō gakufu nippon zokkyoku shū, Fashionable Edition (Osaka: S. Miki, 1891).

6 Shūji Isawa, Shōgaku shōka, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Dainippon Tosho, 1892).

7 Later sources list the name of the composer Masujirō Ōki 大木益二郎. See Kendō Ishii 石井研堂, Zōho kakuchō Meiji jibutsu kigen 増補拡張明治事物起源. (The Origins of Meiji affairs, rev. and enlarged ed.) (Tokyo: Shunyōdō, 1944), reprinted as Meiji jibutsu kigen, supplementary volume to Meiji bunka zenshū 明治文化全集 (Complete works on Meiji culture), ed. Meiji Bunka Kenkyūkai 明治文化研究 (Tokyo: Nihon Hyōron Sha, 1969), 391; and Shiiba, Nihon no uta, 9.

Nishiki no mihata ja shiranaika. Toko ton’yare ton’yarena.

My prince, my prince, what is that you have Fluttering in front of the horses? Do it to the end! Do it to the end!

That is the silken flag from the emperor With an order to punish the enemies of the court, don’t you know? Do it to the end! Do it to the end!8

The musical representations of “Miyasan” in both collections are practically identical, sharing the same pitches, intervallic structure, and rhythmic organization. There are a few minor differences. The eighth notes in Nagai and Kobatake’s version are grouped into units of two and

four, while the eighth notes in Isawa’s version are separated. The rhythmic pattern in the third measure and the melodic pattern in the fourth measure in the two versions differ slightly as well.

Nevertheless, the overall similarities between the two versions are significant because the relative obscurity of the composer and the nature of the piece as a popular military song suggest that the composer did not commit his work to any kind of musical notation at the time of composition (ca. 1868). In addition, popular music in Japan did not have a method of notation at that time.9 A limited number of Tokugawa soldiers had received instructions in Western notation

8 The phrase “toko ton’yare” roughly translates to “do it to the end.” In the original context of the song, it meant to eradicate all enemies of the imperial authority. Ian Bradley, in his notes to The Mikado, comments that the phrase has a “foul” connotation, which Gilbert and Sullivan may not have been aware when they chose to use the song. [Ian Bradley, ed. The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 618.] Considering Isawa’s choice to include the song in a collection for elementary school pupils, the “foul” connotation, whatever that may be, may have not been widespread until much later.

9 For more detailed discussions of Japanese musical notation see William P. Malm, Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1959); Haruko Komada, “Theory and Notation in Japan,” in East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea, 565–84.

before the civil war, but it is unlikely that a Satsuma soldier would have known how to notate the song in Western notation.10 The song, then, must have been transmitted orally among soldiers

and others; however, the similarity between the two collections negates the possibility of

Kobatake and Isawa transcribing the melody independently from one other. Either they derived

their versions from the same source, which is unknown to us, or, considering the close dates of

their publications, Kobatake and Isawa collaborated on the project. Another possibility is that, considering the dates of publication, Isawa copied from Kobatake without the latter being aware, or vice versa. Despite the similarities, the few differences between the two versions discussed above can help us determine the source that Puccini used.

There are other interesting differences, although not ones that concern structural elements of the music. Nagai and Kobatake’s transcription of the song contains several interesting performance indications. Its tempo is marked Allegro Moderato, and it has a single dynamic marking p at the beginning of the piece. These indicate that within only a few decades after the opening of the country in 1854, some Japanese musicians were able to decipher these signs.

These expressive markings are altogether absent in Isawa’s version.

Another striking difference between the two versions is their editors’ understanding of the tonality of the piece. “Miyasan” is composed of six pitches: D, E, F, G, A, and C. It begins on D and ends on the same pitch an octave lower after a series of descending figures. The song

10 Napoleon III was interested in supporting the Tokugawa shogunate in its attempt to “modernize” their army. A French military instructor, L. Guttig, did began systematic instruction on bugle and Western music in 1867. [Rihei Nakamura 中村理平, Yōgaku dōnyūsha no kiseki: Nihon kindai yōgaku josetsu 洋楽導入者の軌跡：日本近代洋楽序説 (The paths of introducers of Western music: an introduction to the history of Western music in modern Japan) (Tokyo: Tōsuishobō, 1993), 49.]

can be understood to be in the ritsu scale (D, E, G, A, and C) of the court music (gagaku) with an

auxiliary pitch, F, or, applying Koizumi’s theory of the tetrachord, it can be analyzed as two

conjunct ritsu tetrachords.11 Nagai and Kobatake do not provide any key signature, seemingly

implying that designation of Western tonality is unnecessary. Isawa’s notation, on the other hand,

points out that the piece is in F major: he indicates one flat in the key signature and includes

Arabic numerals beneath the notes which correspond to the scale degrees of F major (see

Example 3b). Isawa’s tonal interpretation of the piece does not necessarily make logical sense,

since the piece, according to Isawa’s reading, begins and ends on the submediant of the scale,

and the tonic appears only twice in the weakest part of the measure. This idiosyncratic conflation

of Japanese music and Western tonal theory is, however, characteristic of Isawa, who aimed at

fusing the two musical traditions.

Puccini’s settings of the song betray influence of both versions, sharing Isawa’s tonal

understanding of “Miyasan” as well as Nagai and Kobatake’s characteristic melodic shape.

Puccini implies Isawa’s idiosyncratic major-mode tonality of the piece either through key

signature or harmony in four out of five settings of “Miyasan” during Sharpless’s visit to Cio-

Cio-San in Act II. The harmonic setting of Puccini’s first quotation of the tune indicates B-flat major (see Example 5). The tonal inconclusiveness of the piece—it ends on the submediant— works to Puccini’s advantage, enabling him to weave the melody in and out of the continuous musical fabric. The melodic structures in Puccini’s settings, on the other hand, point toward

Nagai and Kobatake’s version of the song. Nagai and Kobatake and Isawa’s versions differ

11 Beckerman, “The Sword on the Wall,” 307. For more detailed discussions of Japanese music theory, see Malm, Japanese Music and Komada, “Theory and Notation in Japan.”

melodically only in the fourth measure: while Kobatake maintains a descending major third gap between A and F, Isawa fills in this gap with a G. In his settings of the piece, Puccini follows

Kobatake’s model and never fills in the major third gap in the corresponding places. Puccini’s

setting of the tune while Cio-Cio-San explains Yamadori’s courtship to Sharpless, in particular,

strongly mirrors the melodic and rhythmic structure and tonality of Kobatake’s model (see

Example 6). Puccini presents the song in its original form without any key signature, and the

harmony that supports it, moving between C major and D minor, does not make any tonal sense.

This example strongly suggests Puccini’s reliance on Nagai and Kobatake’s collection.12 It is

also possible to consider, especially when Puccini’s harmonization of the tune is taken into

consideration, that he had access to Isawa’s collection as well. Although the nature of “Miyasan”

as an orally transmitted popular song prevents us from identifying a single authoritative musical

representation of it, we can, with some confidence, refer to Nagai and Kobatake’s as well as

Isawa’s versions as the models that Puccini consulted.

Many discussions of “Miyasan” in the literature on Madama Butterfly revolve around the

dramatic significance of the tune and its function as a sort of leitmotif. Biographers like Carner

and Girardi see a casual link between the title of the song, which roughly translates to “My

Prince” in English, and the social title of Prince Yamadori establishing a direct relationship

between the melody and the character.13 This reading, however, does not explain Puccini’s use of

12 Groos in his discussion of “Echigo jishi” comes to the same conclusion and mentions “Miyasan” briefly. (Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 52.)

13 Carner, Puccini, 416; Girardi, Puccini, 215.

the tune in the scene leading up to the Prince’s entrance; in other words, the tune is invoked

before the relationship between the leitmotif and the character is established. Carner is very

much aware of this flaw in his argument, but cannot resolve it, remaining puzzled over the

issue.14 In their attempts to resolve this issue, Powils-Okano and Budden propose alternative

theories for the meaning of the tune, both of which are convincing, yet not without their own

problems. Their analyses rely on the premise that repeated musical fragments carry a constant

symbolic meaning throughout the opera, that Puccini used leitmotifs based on the Wagnerian

model. Wagner’s influence on Puccini’s compositional practice, especially his use of recurring

motives, is a fascinating and complex topic beyond the scope of this thesis. Although I will not

address the issue directly, I will take a closer look at Powils-Okano and Budden’s discussions,

outline their problems, and arrive at a yet another way of understanding Puccini’s use of

“Miyasan,” which moves away from assigning specific meaning(s) to the tune.

Powils-Okano claims that Puccini invests the tune with two meanings: “question” and

“prince.”15 In the scene following Cio-Cio-San’s entrance and the crowd scene in Act I, Cio-Cio-

San and Pinkerton retreat into their new house. Cio-Cio-San asks Pinkerton if he would like to see her “little feminine things” (“pochi oggetti da donna”), to which he answers with a rhetorical question, “Oh, why should I, my lovely Butterfly?” (“O perchè mai, mia bella Butterfly?”) The first violin part plays a scalar descent from B to D with a minor third leap between A and F-sharp,

14 “The ensuing entry of Prince Yamadori, the second episode, represents a deft dramatic twist to draw out the suspense of the preceding conversation [between Cio-Cio-San and Sharpless]. Strangely enough, Yamadori’s theme… is introduced in a previous context which by the widest stretch of imagination cannot be linked with that character.” (Carner, Puccini, 425.)

15 Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 53–5.

to accompany Pinkerton’s words (see Example 7). This short melodic fragment, according to

Powils-Okano, is a reference to “Miyasan.” In subsequent appearances of the tune in Act II, she

notes that Butterfly asks Sharpless two questions: whether he wants to smoke, (“Fumate?”) and

when the robins nest in America, (“Quando fanno il lor nido in America i pettirossi?”) She also

understands Prince Yamadori’s courtship and proposal, whose entrance is marked by the

particularly colorful arrangement of “Miyasan,” as another kind of question. This explanation

provides coherence to Puccini’s placements of the tune, but is not convincing since the song’s

appearance in Act I, a crucial key element in her argument, is questionable. Scalar passages with

minor or major third leaps—pentatonicism—abound in the score of Madama Butterfly. The fragment is too short to establish its identity as a reference to “Miyasan” and does not correspond

to the song precisely. While the tune stands out quite conspicuously in other places, this

fragment is nestled in a dense orchestral texture and hard to hear as an explicit reference to the

Japanese song.

Powils-Okano bases the additional association of the tune with the character of Yamadori

on her problematic reading of the song. According to her, the text of the song foreshadows

Japan’s political intervention in Korea, which, she adds, was understood in Japan as a “punitive

expedition.”16 Powils-Okano draws a connection between Yamadori’s mission (Einsatz) to

conquer Cio-Cio-San with Japan’s colonization of Korea. Although this reading adds interesting

political and gender issues to Puccini’s quotation, Japanese sources, including the one that

Powils-Okano consulted, Meiji Jibutsu Kigen, maintains that the song gained popularity among

16 Ibid., 54. “Der Text bezog sich auf die bevorstehende Korea-Intervention, die in Japan als eine Strafexpedition verstanden wurde.” (The text refers to the imminent Korean intervention, which in Japan was understood as a punitive expedition.)

the loyalist soldiers during the Boshin Conflict of 1868.17 It is improbable that the Satsuma

soldiers were singing about “punishing” the Koreans while marching to overthrow the shogun’s

authority. This misunderstanding seems to stem from Powils-Okano’s inaccurate translation of a

particular Japanese word referring to the enemy of the imperial court as a Korean enemy.18

Although Japan’s imperialistic political activities in the first half of the twentieth century were an unfortunate historical reality, her reading of the text is problematic.

Budden, on the other hand, has a different solution to the problem and finds a common trait between Cio-Cio-San and Yamadori. Budden sees in Cio-Cio-San’s interaction with

Sharpless her failure to become an American hostess: she offers a Japanese pipe and asks about his ancestors. The fragments of “Miyasan” that accompany Cio-Cio-San’s conversation with the

American consul add humor to the scene. The same Japanese melody also marks the courting by

Prince Yamadori, who, according to Budden, “shares her pretension to Western culture,” emphasizing the commonality between the two characters.19 Although there is nothing in Illica

and Giacosa’s libretto that seem to indicate Prince Yamadori’s “pretensions to Western culture,”

Budden’s characterization matches that of the American short story which was one of the sources

17 Ishii, Meiji jibutsu kigen, 391.

18 Her conclusion that the text of the song refers to Japan’s political intervention in Korea seems to stem from her misreading of the Japanese acronym composed of two characters 朝敵. The first character, among many other things, can stand for Korea 朝鮮 or Koreans 朝鮮人, and the second character signifies enemies. Thus, the word can conceivably be translated as the “Korean enemy” 朝鮮人の敵 which would support Powils-Okano’s claim quite comfortably. The meaning of the first character, however, can vary. Considering the historical context of the song, the first character stands for the word for the imperial court, and the whole word should be translated as “the enemy of the imperial court (朝廷の敵).”

19 Budden, Puccini, 260.

for the opera.20 In Jonathan Luther Long’s 1898 “Madame Butterfly,” Yamadori is a wealthy,

Westernized Japanese nobleman. Despite his Westernized lifestyle, he perpetuates the decadent and immoral, therefore oriental, institution of prostitution. In other words, both Cio-Cio-San and

Yamadori, despite their effort to assimilate American culture, cannot escape their roots and betray their Japanese essence.

Although Budden’s explanation attempts to solve the problem of Puccini’s consistency, it is difficult to accept his assumptions about Prince Yamadori’s characterization in the opera’s libretto. When Cio-Cio-San refuses to accept his proposal on account of her marriage to

Pinkerton, Yamadori upholds the Japanese marital law along with Goro and pities Cio-Cio-San’s blind faith in her American marriage. Budden’s explanation is insightful and attractive; however, it requires an audience’s familiarity with the characterization of Yamadori in the original short story. Although Giocosa published an Italian translation of the short story in 1904 to coincide with Puccini’s opera, it is not clear how many members of the contemporary Italian audiences would have made the connection that Budden draws.21

Both Powils-Okano and Budden attempt to resolve the question regarding Puccini’s seemingly incoherent use of “Miyasan,” posing alternative readings of the borrowings. Their results seem convincing, but upon closer examination they repeat Carner’s method of ascribing meaning or meanings to the tune, which perhaps is not the most appropriate way of looking at

Puccini’s opera. Puccini’s use of this particular tune differs from other melodies, to which we are

20 John Luther Long, “Madame Butterfly,” Century Magazine 55 (January 1898): 374– 92.

21 Groos, “Lieutenant F. B. Pinkerton,” 174.

able to draw explicit connections with concrete ideas, characters, or events. It is also unusual that

Puccini sets the tune multiple times in a relatively short period. Rather than trying to “decode”

the meaning of the song, in the following section I will demonstrate how Puccini uses the tune to

create a dramatic tension and, through its metamorphoses, to depict a shifting perception of Cio-

Cio-San’s character.

The main goal of the first part of Act II is to set up the tragedy of the opera. Pinkerton’s

three years of absence have made Cio-Cio-San vulnerable to extreme emotional swings. She

learns from Sharpless’s visit of the imminent return of her husband, but fails to understand the

meaning of this return. Despite his effort at communicating to Cio-Cio-San, Pinkerton’s request to adopt their son, Dolore, a series of questions and small talk by Cio-Cio-San interrupts

Sharpless’s speech. The elaborate entrance of Prince Yamadori completely overshadows

Sharpless’s presence and diverts Cio-Cio-San’s attention. Puccini’s quotations of “Miyasan”

appear at this point in the drama and reflect the increasing tension of the situation. As

Sharpless’s frustration mounts, Puccini’s setting of “Miyasan” becomes more elaborate and

assertive.

The tune appears twice during Cio-Cio-San and Sharpless’s conversation as a part of the

orchestral backdrop. After exchanging greetings with each other, Sharpless hesitantly addresses

the purpose of his visit, and his discomfort and insecurity is underscored by the violin figure that oscillates between F and G-flat (see Example 8a). Cio-Cio-San immediately interrupts Sharpless

and makes a comment about the weather using a melodic fragment from “Miyasan.” The

orchestra, scored lightly with pizzicato strings and winds, completes the statement (see Example

5). Sharpless, recovering himself from Cio-Cio-San’s interjection and her offer of a Japanese

pipe, begins a second attempt. This time, his resolve is stronger and the oscillating violin figure

develops into an assertive ascending scalar passage (see Example 8b). He succeeds in presenting

Pinkerton’s letter, but once again Cio-Cio-San interrupts him with an exclamation that she is “the

happiest woman in Japan” (“Io son la donna più lieta del Giappone”) while the orchestra plays

the “Miyasan” melody (see Example 9). The harmonic setting of the tune is slightly different

from the previous one, but the orchestration is almost identical. After this quotation of the

melody, Cio-Cio-San takes control of the conversation and initiates a dialogue, asking Sharpless

when the robins nest in America (“Quando fanno il lor nido in America i pettirossi?”): an

emblematic question, which reflects Butterfly’s childishness and inability fully to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

When Sharpless fails to answer her question, Cio-Cio-San starts to chatter about her newest suitor, Prince Yamadori. Once again, the melody of “Miyasan” appears signaling the lack of communication between the two characters. The wall between the two is even thicker this time since Butterfly’s music abandons Western tonality. While the orchestration of this quotation is similar to that of the previous settings, its harmonic setting, consisting of alternating D minor and C major chords and lacking any sense of tonal grounding, is disorienting (see Example 6).

By the end of the song, Cio-Cio-San no longer converses with Sharpless. Goro enters the stage, providing more information about Yamadori to Sharpless, orchestral tension mounts as more instruments join the texture, and the increasingly loud and martial music signals the approach of

Prince Yamadori. His spectacular entrance is depicted by a particularly colorful orchestration of

“Miyasan.” Bassoons, horns, and cellos play the melody, adding volume and weight to the lower range, while the rest of the strings play the static harmonic accompaniment in an agitated tremolo.

The high winds play rapid upward arpeggios depicting, perhaps, the fluttering of the banners that

is mentioned in the lyrics (see Example 10). Although Prince Yamadori’s visit in the libretto may appear abrupt and forced, with his repeated quotations of the melody in the preceding scene as well as during Yamadori’s entrance, gradually increasing the intensity of each successive entry,

Puccini succeeds in making Yamadori’s introduction to the scene seem natural, even inevitable.

The serious tone of the last setting of “Miyasan” marks Cio-Cio-San’s shift from an innocent child bride to a tragic heroine. Although Yamadori’s entrance exploits the traits of exotic music, Cio-Cio-San greets him in a dramatic, almost mock-Wagnerian style. The last appearance of the quotation that accompanies the Prince’s farewell to Cio-Cio-San continues this sense of high drama with its dense, contrapuntal texture, sustained dissonances, and lush orchestration. The music set to Yamadori’s “Addio” foreshadows the first two notes of the song, making a smooth transition between the sections (see Example 11). By refusing to marry him,

Butterfly rejects her last chance to normalize; the consequences are serious and eventually detrimental to her life. Cio-Cio-San’s childlike quality seems humorous at the beginning of the act; however, by now Sharpless realizes the possibility of a tragic consequence brought on by her naïveté. The conclusion of this episode, signaled by this final setting of “Miyasan,” redirects

Cio-Cio-San’s attention to Sharpless, who finally succeeds in reading at least part of Pinkerton’s letter to her.

Many problems surround our understanding of Puccini’s use of “Miyasan” in Madama

Butterfly. The difficulty of obtaining reliable sources led to inconsistencies and misrepresentations in the scholarly literature about the song itself. Past scholars have tackled the issue of decoding the meaning that Puccini ascribed to the song. Their arguments, however, clouded the basic way in which his settings of the song function in the opera. Puccini

manipulates the Japanese melody “Miyasan” in order to set up the dramatic tension and

momentum in the first part of Act II and to cast a tragic light on the main character of the opera.

The changing settings of “Miyasan” musically mirror the dramatic situation in which Cio-Cio-

San and other Japanese characters interfere with Sharpless’s attempts to read Pinkerton’s letter.

At the resolution of the scene, when Yamadori retires and the American consul finally receives

Butterfly’s undivided attention, Sharpless realizes the impossibility of his mission. From this point on, the opera takes an increasingly tragic turn, which the somber final setting of “Miyasan” initiates.

CHAPTER 3

“KIMIGAYO”

In their discussions of Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies, Carner, Budden, Girardi, and

Powils-Okano refer to “Kimigayo” as the Japanese national anthem and variously interpret

Puccini’s quotation of parts of the melody in Act I as an exotic device that introduces two

Japanese officials, an indication of the solemnity of the marriage, or simply an allusion to the national anthem itself.1 Their arguments, however, do not take into consideration complex

historical and cultural factors that surrounded the genesis of “Kimigayo.” The concept of a

national anthem as an emblematic musical representation of a nation is intricately connected with

the development of the nation-state in the Western world. The existence of a recognizable

Japanese national anthem by the late nineteenth century, less than half a century after its opening

and less than four decades after its power shift, indicates the pace at which Japan was adapting

Western political thought and customs. Musicologists’ failure to address the issue severely limits

our understanding and interpretation of Puccini’s quotation of “Kimigayo.” In an attempt to

mitigate the situation, I will investigate the checkered history of the Japanese national anthem

“Kimigayo” and examine how Western music and musicians helped to define Japan’s national

identity in the second half of the nineteenth century. I will also discuss Puccini’s use of the

melody in Madama Butterfly in order to observe how the concept of nationhood, which

“Kimigayo” represents, plays out in the opera. Situating “Kimigayo” within its proper historical

1 Carner, Puccini, 415–6; Budden, Puccini, 250; Girardi, Puccini, 215; Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 49.

context of Japan’s Westernization and modernization in the late nineteenth century will add

another layer to the interpretation of Puccini’s quotation.

At the time of its creation, Japanese regarded “Kimigayo” as one of the symbols of

Japan’s progress and modernization. After the Boshin Conflict of 1868–9, the leaders of Japan

sought to create a modern nation based on Western models. By the time of the civil war, the

Satsuma clan, one of the most influential groups of people in the new government, had recently

updated their armed forces, modeled after the British army and navy. In 1869 the Satsuma army

hired William Fenton (1828–?), the bandleader of the British military in Japan, which served as a

guard to the British legation in Yokohama from 1868 to 1871, to teach military music to its

members.2 Fenton, born in Ireland, joined the military at age seventeen and served over twenty-

five years in various outposts of the British Empire in India, Gibraltar, Malta, South Africa, and

China prior to coming to Japan. Fenton quickly noticed the lack of a national anthem and

stressed the importance of such a piece for the ensemble.3 The leaders of the Satsuma clan

understood this lack and realized the need for such a piece of music for Japan to be regarded as a

modern nation.4 Despite their efforts in searching for a pre-existing song that would satisfy the

demand, they were unable to find any song that would be suitable, although they were successful

2 Nakamura, Yōgaku donyūsha, 67.

3 Kōichi Nomura, “Occidental Music,” in Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, vol 3 of Japanese Culture in the Meiji Era, ed. Toyotaka Komiya, trans. Donald Keen (Tokyo: Tokyo Bunko, 1969), 481.

4 Yoshio Yamada 山田考雄, Kimigayo no rekishi 君が代の歴史 (The history of “Kimigayo”) (Tokyo: Hōbunkan, 1956), 120.

in selecting an appropriate text. The poem was a modified version of an ancient waka, a Japanese poetic form consisting of thirty-one syllables, from a tenth-century anthology of poems,

Kokinshū:

Kimi ga yo wa Chiyo ni yachiyo ni Sazare ishi no Iwao to narite Kokeno musu made

May your reign flourish For a thousand, eight thousand years Until a pebble Grows into a rock Covered with moss.5

At the request of the Satsuma military band, Fenton agreed to set the waka as a national anthem; the problematic history of “Kimigayo” begins at this point.

The cross-cultural collaboration between the members of the Satsuma clan and the British military bandleader unfortunately did not result in a successful anthem. Fenton set this poetry to military band music supposedly modeled after a Japanese song, “Bushi no uta” (Song of a Bushi), that he heard from his interpreter, Hara Sōsuke.6 The model

song itself does not survive, but the Satsuma clansmen accepted Fenton’s composition

and performed in front of the Emperor Meiji in 1870.7 Although the Japanese leaders

selected the text with care, Fenton did not know much about it. While the text contains

5 Ibid., 121.

6 Ibid.

7 Yoshikazu Izumoji 出雲路敬和, Kogaku no shinzui 古楽の真髄 (The essence of the ancient music) (Tokyo: Ōki Shoin, 1943), quoted in Yamada, Kimigayo no rekishi, 130.

thirty-two syllables, the music contains only thirty-one half notes, making the singing of

the text impossible (see Example 12). It is evident that, while Fenton realized that waka

customarily contained thirty-one syllables, he was not aware of the exception of the

“Kimigayo” text, which contained thirty-two. 8

Major changes in Fenton’s life occurred in 1871, the year after the first performance of

the “national anthem.”9 In February the Meiji government consolidated the existing armed forces

organized by the various clans into a unified Ministry of War, effectively terminating Fenton’s

service for the Satsuma clan. Three months later, Fenton’s wife Annie Maria died at age forty,

and in July Fenton retired from the British military, in which he had served for almost thirty

years. By this time, however, he accepted an offer from the naval division of the Ministry, which

inherited the Satsuma clan’s British-style military band and decided to stay in Japan. In October

the Ministry officially hired Fenton as a music instructor of their band, which had inherited the

Satsuma clan’s instruments and music.

Fenton’s new career as a full-time music instructor in Japan lasted for six years.

Meanwhile, his version of “Kimigayo” spread to other musical ensembles in Japan, raising

concerns from various Japanese officials. In 1872 the Ministry of War split into Ministries of

Army and Navy. Fenton’s band belonged to the latter organization. He also married an American

8 Sukeyasu Shiba 芝祐泰, “Kimigayo senpu no jijō” 「君が代」撰譜の事情(The circumstances surrounding the composition of “Kimigayo”), vol. 2, in Kimigayo Ronkō- Gakufushū 君が代論稿：楽譜集 (Documents about and music of “Kimigayo”), vol. 1 of Kimigayo shiryō shūsei 君が代史料集成 (Collected sources on “Kimigayo”), Kazuo Shigeshita 繁下和雄 and Tetsuo Satō 左藤徹夫, eds. (Tokyo: Ōzorasha, 1991), 636.

9 The following information about Fenton’s life and career in Japan comes from Nakamura, “John William Fenton (1828–?),” in Yōgaku dōnyūsha, 67–122.

woman, Jane Pilkington, around that time. In 1875 Fenton found a second post as a music

instructor for the imperial court orchestra, teaching Western music and instruments to gagaku

musicians. He taught the court orchestra the same repertoire as the navy band, including

“Kimigayo.” However, as performances of Fenton’s “Kimigayo” became widespread, the officials in the Naval Ministry became increasingly dissatisfied with it. In 1877 a rebellion broke out in southwestern Japan, led by the dissident Satsuma clansmen, forcing the Naval Ministry to cut its expenses. Since the Naval Ministry was unable to renew Fenton’s contract, he left Japan in March 1877 retiring to his wife’s home in Illinois. Fenton’s leave, however, provided the

Navy band an opportunity to create a new setting of the same text that would suit the demand

and the taste of the Naval Ministry officials.10 It also led to the hiring of a German musician,

Franz Eckert (1852–1916), who left a lasting legacy in the musical world of Japan.

During his long career that lasted over twenty years, Eckert served a variety of Japanese musical institutions, whose members were all eager to study Western music.11 Following the

conclusion of the rebellion in 1878, the Naval Ministry decided to hire a German music

instructor and advertised the position in German newspapers. The Ministry chose Eckert, from

several qualified applicants, who possessed a professional musical education and was serving in the German military at that time, as a replacement for Fenton. Eckert arrived in Japan in 1879 and immediately commenced his duties at the Naval Ministry. Apparently he was an excellent music educator: his reputation spread rapidly, and other musical establishments hired him as a music instructor. Until his leave in 1899, Eckert taught Western music to the navy band, students

10 Yamada, Kimigayo no rekishi, 139.

11 Nakamura, “Franz Eckert (1852–1916),” in Yōgaku dōnyūsha, 235–337.

at the Music Investigation Committee, musicians at the imperial court, the army band, and the

band of Imperial Guards. Because of his training, he inevitably exposed Japanese students to

German repertoire, shaping Japanese ideas about Western music in a crucial way. He also was

interested in Japanese music, publishing articles for an ethnological newsletter and arrangements

of Japanese folk music for piano. After leaving Japan, he settled in Seoul and also played a key

role in the foundation of Western music in Korea. He died in 1916 in Seoul during the Japanese

occupation of Korea.

Among Eckert’s numerous achievements in Japan and Korea, his contribution to the

formation of the Japanese national anthem is, perhaps, the most significant one for the purpose of

this study. In 1880 as a second attempt at creating a national anthem, the Naval Ministry

commissioned the musicians in the imperial court orchestra to compose settings of the existing

“Kimigayo” text. Four men were responsible for making the final selection of the new musical

settings of the piece submitted by court musicians. They were the bandleaders of the Navy and

Army bands, Hayashi Hiromori 林広守, a representative of the court musicians, and Franz

Eckert.12 Hayashi presented a monophonic setting in a traditional Japanese style composed by a

younger court musician, Oku Kougi 奥好義, to the committee as his own work.13 Other members of the committee swiftly approved the piece as the new setting of the national anthem and commissioned Eckert to harmonize it.14

12 Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 481.

13 Shiba, “Kimigayo senpu,” 642.

14 Shinjirō Wada 和田信二郎, Kimigayo to banzai 君が代と万歳 (“Kimigayo” and banzai) (Tokyo: Kōfūkan, 1932), quoted in Yamada, Kimigayo no rekishi, 143–4.

The result of the collaboration was a successful blend of Japanese melody and Western harmony (see Example 13). The melody is in the traditional gagaku mode of ichikotsu chō,

consisting of five main pitches, D, F, G, A, and B, and an auxiliary pitch, C. The use of a gagaku mode, which made the piece appealing to the other committee members, posed a difficulty for

Eckert who was expected to provide a Western harmonization of it. Although the piece starts and

ends on D, which suggests the tonic of the piece, the leading tone C-sharp, is entirely absent from the melody. Rather than forcing a D-minor tonality on the melody, Eckert chose to leave the opening and the ending unharmonized. He seems to have decided to harmonize the interior section of the melody in C major, although the occasional secondary dominant chords and the lack of perfect cadence do not strongly establish the tonic. A hint of madrigalism appears in measure 7 as the outer voices expand in contrary motion to the words describing pebbles growing into rocks. The lack of convincing ending, because of its ambiguous tonality, may appear unusual for a national anthem. The inconclusiveness of the setting, however, does reflect

the content of the text, which wishes for an eternal reign of the emperor. The somber,

monophonic ending indicates the ceremonial nature of the piece and reflects its gagaku origin.

The court orchestra, which by this time played both traditional and Western instruments,

performed the new setting of Kimigayo in the ceremonies celebrating Emperor Meiji’s birthday

in November 1880.15 Eckert’s band arrangement of the piece was published in 1888 with a

bilingual title “Dainippon Reishiki: Japanische Hymne nach einer alt japanischen Melodie” (The

Ceremonial Music of Great Japan: Japanese National Anthem after an Ancient Japanese

15 Yamada, Kimigayo no rekishi, 142.

Melody).16 The melody was described as alt japanischen despite the fact that the melody itself was newly composed for the occasion. Once again, the foreign musician who played a crucial role in the creation of “Kimigayo” seemed to have lacked a fundamental understanding of the circumstances in which the piece was being assembled.

The idea of a national anthem was, therefore, from the beginning a foreign concept, and the cross-cultural effort of creating a Japanese national anthem resulted in a piece of music laden with foreign elements and connotations, unable to attain popular acceptance in the political and musical culture of Japan. Shiba’s account of the origins of “Kimigayo” from a court musician’s perspective exemplifies Japanese uneasiness in adopting “Kimigayo” as a national anthem.

Shiba’s version of the story, however, contains conflicting information from the standard history of “Kimigayo” presented in other writings.17 In 1874, according to Shiba, court musicians were ordered to study Western music.18 The same year, the Vice-Grand Master of Ceremonies requested that the Naval Ministry provide instruction in Western music to his musicians.19 From

1876 to 1877 Fenton had taught Western military band instruments at the gagaku department. A concert had been given in 1876 on the Emperor’s birthday which included, in addition to traditional Japanese music, a program of wind band music consisting of marches and Fenton’s setting of “Kimigayo.” The piece, which Fenton has always referred to as the nashonaru himune

16 Shiba, “Kimigayo senpu,” 646.

17 See Yamada, Kimigayo no rekishi; Wada, Kimigayo to banzai; and Izumoji, Kogaku no shinzui.

18 Shiba, “Kimigayo senpu,” 636.

19 Hisashi Furukawa, “Gagaku,” in Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, 70.

(national hymn/anthem), was placed at the beginning of the program “according to the custom of

[Fenton’s] country.”20 By 1876 at least two music ensembles in Japan were performing Fenton’s

setting of “Kimigayo.”

Around the same time, in 1877, the Tokyo Women’s Normal School, established in 1874,

commissioned the gagaku department to compose melodies suitable for teaching to elementary

school students.21 According to Shiba, the text of “Kimigayo” was also included among the poems to be set for the project, and Oku’s setting of “Kimigayo” was actually made for this

occasion rather than on request from the Naval Ministry. Hayashi, who realized the potential of

the piece upon examining it, kept the manuscript and replaced it with Fenton’s setting of

“Kimigayo” in later court performances. Franz Eckert also held a post as an instructor at the

gagaku department from 1887 to 1899. While visiting the gagaku department, Eckert heard the

new setting of “Kimigayo,” was moved by its solemnity, and decided to orchestrate the melody.

The Naval Ministry followed the court musicians’ lead, abolished Fenton’s version of

“Kimigayo,” and replaced it with Oku’s.22

There are several problems in this version of the history of “Kimigayo” which reveal the

complex circumstances surrounding its creation. The Normal School’s effort to create “edifying

and recreational songs” resulted in the publication of Shōgaku shōka shū (A Collection of Songs for Elementary School Children) in 1881.23 Thirty-three pieces of music were included, of which

20 Shiba, “Kimigayo senpu,” 637.

21 Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 461.

22 Shiba, “Kimigayo senpu,” 638–40.

23 Nomura “Occidental Music,” 473.

thirty came from Western sources.24 The editors of the collection set the text of “Kimigayo” to the music of “Glorious Apollo” by Samuel Webbe, an eighteenth-century English composer.25

Also, the text included in the collection has additional verses, suggesting that the texts intended for Fenton’s setting and for the Normal School were different. In other words, although Shiba claims that Oku’s setting of “Kimigayo” was intended for the Normal School’s use, the Normal

School had in mind a version of the text different from what Oku ended up setting. Why then did

Shiba present this seemingly flawed version of the history of “Kimigayo”? One explanation is that this is a story that Shiba’s predecessors transmitted to him, which inverts the power relationship between the Naval Ministry and the court. The court musicians’ aversion to the

Naval Ministry can also be detected in the detached treatment of “Kimigayo” as foreign music included in a repertoire of recently imported Western music.

Although the text of “Kimigayo” speaks of the desire for the eternal reign of an emperor, the gagaku department, a musical institution closely attached to the emperor, ironically, did not accept the tune as native music. The performances of the gagaku ensemble appear in collections of pieces coming from the same source. For example, Tōgaku 唐楽 includes pieces transmitted to Japan from China and Komagaku 高麗楽 compositions from Korea. The Western band music that Fenton transmitted to gagaku musicians was performed collectively as Ōshūgaku 欧州楽

(European music). In performances the pieces are also grouped together in the same mode, and

24 Ury Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan, Studies in the History and Interpretation of Music, vol. 44 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1994), 93.

25 Ibid., 104.

the orchestra performs a short piece called bongen or nyūchō, a tuning piece, before each set, which helps to tune and establishes the ethos of the mode. The court musicians customarily understood “Kimigayo” as the Western equivalent of a tuning piece and performed it at the beginning of the Ōshūgaku.26 Far from understanding it as a Japanese national anthem, the court

musicians interpreted “Kimigayo,” the new version of which one of them had composed, as a

foreign import.

The other Japanese government institutions’ treatments of “Kimigayo,” namely of the

Education, Naval, and Foreign Ministries, are no more straightforward than that of the gagaku

department, telling of the varied reactions Japanese people had against the song. In 1893 the

Education Ministry sent out a notice to all public schools entitled Shukujitsu daisaijitsu kashi

narabi gakufu (Lyrics and Music for the Holidays), which listed “Kimigayo” by Oku at the top.27

Through a series of regulations and notices, the Education Ministry established the singing of

“Kimigayo” in public schools and associated the piece “with schools, emperor, and ideas of

loyalty and patriotism,” although the Ministry never referred to it as the national anthem 28

According to Shiba, the members of the Navy band, and presumably other members of the Naval

Ministry, referred to the piece as kokka (national anthem), a term derived from Fenton’s use of

26 Shiba, “Kimigayo Senpu,” 641.

27 See “Kimigayo Gakufushū” (Collected Music of “Kimigayo”) in Kimigayo Ronkō- Gakufushū, 1.

28 Denise Cripps, “Flag and Fanfares: The Hinomaru Flag and Kimigayo Anthem,” in Case Studies on Human Rights in Japan, ed. Roger Goodman and Ian Neary (Richmond, England: Japan Library, 1996), 79. Nakamura suggests that the Education Ministry’s regulations help consolidate the widespread recognition of “Kimigayo” as a national anthem among Japanese population: Yōgaku donyūsha, 259. The Japanese National Diet officially recognized “Kimigayo” as a national anthem in 1999.

the term nashonaru himune adopted by the Navy band.29 In 1889 and 1903, Belgium and Russia

respectively requested the Foreign Ministry to send them copies of the Japanese national anthem.

On both occasions, the Ministry asked the gagaku department for an appropriate piece, revealing even a decade after the composition of the piece that the Foreign Ministry was unsure about the status of the national anthem. Both times the court musicians supplied Eckert’s arrangement of

“Kimigayo” to the Ministry.30 Although Shiba stresses that the gagaku department did not recognize “Kimigayo” as a Japanese national anthem, it nevertheless offered the piece when asked by the Foreign Ministry. The Japanese of the turn of the century, even within a single institution, did not have a common understanding of what their national anthem was or what it signified.

This brief overview of the history of “Kimigayo” and its varied receptions in Japanese political and musical culture highlights several important issues that Western scholars have overlooked. Unlike Western nations, whose national anthems are strongly connected to their histories of nationhood, “Kimigayo” is a less culturally and historically rooted product created in response to the Western concept of national state. Its initial form was an ill fitted setting of an ancient Japanese text by an English bandmaster, which raised a voice of concern among the members of the Naval Ministry. The second version of the song had an increased Japanese participation and seemed to be more successful, but it was never accepted as indigenous music and its political significance was understood only when Japan needed to assert its position in the international arena. On the other hand, although those who were responsible for the creation of

29 Shiba, “Kimigayo senpu,” 638.

30 Ibid., 644–6.

the national anthem were aware of its Western implication, they were also concerned with

producing an authentically Japanese piece. Combining classical Japanese poetry with the melody composed in the oldest continuing musical tradition of Japan and given Western harmony,

“Kimigayo” represents the Meiji Era’s fascination with Japan’s ancient past and the modernity of the Western world.

Although he had contact with a Japanese musician, Puccini was most likely not aware of the complex origins of “Kimigayo” and its subsequent history in Japan. Considering that the

Japanese foreign ministry at the time adopted “Kimigayo” as the country’s national anthem,

Ōyama, as wife of the Japanese ambassador to Italy, would likely have described the song as such. In Madama Butterfly, Puccini treated “Kimigayo” as the Japanese national anthem, comparable to its American counterpart.31 Those audiences and musicologists who recognized

“Kimigayo” shared the same assumption Puccini had about the Japanese national anthem and did

not consider Puccini’s treatment of the song as problematic. In that sense, Puccini successfully

utilized the piece in order to create an easily recognizable musical contrast between American

and Japanese cultures. On another level, Puccini’s quotations of the piece comment on Cio-Cio-

San’s troubled status within Japanese society, excluding her from Japan’s Westernized

modernity. Puccini’s musical manipulation of “Kimigayo,” although probably unintentionally,

draws a stark contrast between Japan’s successful Westernization, represented by the song, and

Cio-Cio-San’s failed attempt to assimilate an American life-style.

31 Although “The Star Spangled Banner” did not officially become the American national anthem until 1931, Italian opera audiences of the time seemed to have recognized it as such. See the excerpt from La Lombardia article on page 5.

Puccini, recognizing “Kimigayo” as the national anthem of Japan, utilizes its melody to represent Japanese officialdom and the legal system, and he places it in direct contrast to “The

Star Spangled Banner.” At the beginning of Act I, the arrival of the American consulate

Sharpless to Pinkerton’s new house prompts Pinkerton to sing an aria “Dovunque al mondo,” whose introduction is based on the opening measures of “The Star Spangled Banner.” A sudden shift in orchestration from string instruments in the closing section of the preceding scene to a section featuring woodwind and brass instruments marks the quotation. Similarly, in the scene following Cio-Cio-San’s wedding procession in the same act, Goro announces the arrivals of the

Imperial Commissioner and the Official Registrar to an accompaniment based on “Kimigayo.” A rapid orchestral crescendo, reflecting the mounting excitement of the wedding party, precedes the stately and majestic setting of “Kimigayo” played by strings, bassoons, and horns (see

Example 14). The national anthems of the United States and Japan, carefully calculated to stand out, greet the entrances of the government officials of the respective countries, reinforcing the international nature of the affair.

Quotations of “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Kimigayo” appear again in Act II, during Prince Yamadori’s courtship scene. Cio-Cio-San refuses Prince Yamadori’s proposal since she is already married to Pinkerton. Goro, in his attempt to convince her to marry Prince

Yamadori, argues that Pinkerton has deserted her, which according to the law of their country (at least in the opera), is equal to being divorced (“Per la moglie, l’abbandono al divorzio equiparò”). In response Butterfly sings, “[that may be] Japanese law” set to a fragment of

“Kimigayo,” and continues “but not the law of my country,” set to the opening of “The Star

Spangled Banner” (“La legge giapponese/non già del mio paese”) (see Example 15). Thus

Puccini contrasts the legal systems of the two countries succinctly with musical symbolism that

refers to the Japanese and American officials in the first act.

While Puccini’s use of “Kimigayo” reveals his attitude toward it as a national anthem, lack of its presence during key points in the opera is also indicative of his characterization of

Cio-Cio-San. Although Sharpless’s arrival is the catalyst for the aria, Pinkerton’s “Dovunque al mondo,” heralded by the opening fragment of “The Star Spangled Banner” in Act I, is his first crucial musical material in the opera, defining him as a brash and casual lover. On the other hand, the setting of a koto piece, “Echigo-jishi,” not the Japanese national anthem, announces

Cio-Cio-San’s entrance in Act I, which enhances the heroine’s exotic and mysterious appeal.32

During the wedding ceremony later in the act, the Imperial Commissioner reads Cio-Cio-San and

Pinkerton’s marriage contract out loud. Puccini sets a portion of the text pertaining to Pinkerton

to the opening phrase of “The Star Spangled Banner,” but none of text referring to Cio-Cio-San

is to “Kimigayo.” Pinkerton, a naval officer, serves in an official capacity, and Puccini highlights

this status with his use of “The Star Spangled Banner.” However, Butterfly is a teahouse girl and

does not belong to the ranks of the Japanese officialdom. Although Puccini puts “Kimigayo” and

“The Star Spangle Banner” on equal footing, he does not characterize Pinkerton and Butterfly’s

respective nationalities in the same manner.

Consideration of “Kimigayo” as one of the products of the Meiji government’s quest to

attain recognition from the Western world as a modern nation provides another layer of

32 For a more detailed discussion of Cio-Cio-San’s entrance scene, see Helen M. Greenwald, “Picturing Cio-Cio-San: House, Screen, and Ceremony in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly,” Cambridge Opera Journal 12 (2001): 237–59.

interpretation in Madama Butterfly. To Europeans at the turn of the twentieth century, Japan was

no longer a mystical land of ancient customs and fantasies. The premiere of Puccini’s Japanese

opera in 1904 coincided with that country’s naval victory against Russia in the battle at Port

Arthur on the Chinese coast of the Japanese Sea.33 Japan’s modernized navy made a strong

impression on the Western world, which quickly recognized it as one of the major powers in the

Pacific region.34 Puccini also met and communicated with Ōyama, who was undoubtedly accustomed to the Western lifestyle and impressed Puccini with her intelligence.35 That Puccini

recognized that part of Japanese society had been considerably Westernized is evident in the

characters of the Imperial Commissioner and the Official Registrar. They are orderly, civil, and

bureaucratic. Their presence forces Cio-Cio-San’s disorderly relatives to quiet down, and they

are able to exchange cordial greetings with Sharpless and Pinkerton. By associating “Kimigayo”

with their entrance, Puccini characterizes the piece as a symbol of modernized Japan.

Cio-Cio-San, too, attempts to assume a Western identity throughout the opera, converting

to Christianity, welcoming Sharpless to an American home, and rejecting Japanese laws. By

refusing to associate Cio-Cio-San with “Kimigayo,” Puccini reveals not only that Cio-Cio-San is

unsuccessful in attaining a Western identity, but she also fails to be included in Japan’s

Westernized modernity. Instead, the older and more irrational side of Japanese culture,

represented by her uncle Bonze and her father’s legacy, haunts Cio-Cio-San continually

33 Girardi, Puccini, 198.

34 Encyclopaedia Britannica Micropaedia Ready Reference and Index, s.v. “Russo- Japanese War.”

35 Groos, “Return of the Native,” 170.

throughout the opera. Refused by both Pinkerton’s American culture and Japan’s modern society, Cio-Cio-San turns to her ancestral past and reunites with her father at the end of the opera.

Although Puccini was most likely unaware of the complex history behind the creation of

“Kimigayo” and its implications in Japan at the turn of the twentieth century, consideration of the song’s historic and political significance in Japan at the time adds another insight into

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Japan’s new government’s quest for a national identity in the nineteenth century coincided with its effort at modernization and Westernization. A need for a national anthem that a British military bandleader, William Fenton, proposed in 1869, initiated a decade-long search. The collaboration among Japanese military bandleaders, court musicians, and a German music instructor, Franz Eckert, in 1880 resulted in the present-day version of

“Kimigayo.” The reception of the piece, which combined elements of ancient and modern

Japanese music, was varied within Japan; however, the Japanese foreign ministry offered it to the international world as the Japanese national anthem. Puccini adopted the piece as a symbol of

Japanese officialdom and legal system, recognizing that certain aspects of Japanese society are comparable to those of the Western world. On another level, by dissociating Cio-Cio-San from

“Kimigayo,” Puccini excludes her from the modern Japan, relegating her to the mystical and exotic Japan.

CHAPTER 4

RUDOLF DITTRICH’S NIPPON GAKUFU

Rudolph Dittrich’s collections of piano arrangements of Japanese melodies, Nippon

Gakufu (1894 and 1895), are two of the most significant source materials for Japanese music that

Puccini consulted in his creation of Madama Butterfly.1 As discussed in the first chapter,

Capellen studied Dittrich’s collection, among others, to identify Japanese melodies and observed

that Puccini’s harmonization of the Japanese folksong “Sakura” corresponds closely to that of

Dittrich.2 In his 1936 article, Carner, too, relied on Dittrich’s collection, but unlike Capellen he

did not draw any further connection between Nippon Gakufu and the opera beyond melodic

resemblances, assuming no direct relationship between them.3 Since modern scholarship on

Puccini has its foundation in Carner’s biography and tends to overlook Capellen’s earlier study,

the discussion of Nippon Gakufu does not resurface in any of the more recent analyses of the

opera.4 Despite the obscurity of Dittrich and his work, a careful examination of Nippon Gakufu

1 Rudolf Dittrich, Nippon Gakufu: sechs japanische Lieder/Six Japanese Popular Songs (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1894); idem., Nippon Gakufu: zehn japanische Lieder/Ten Japanese Songs (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1895).

2 Capellen, “Madame Butterfly,” 466.

3 Carner, “The Exotic Element,” 50.

4 Powils-Okano lists four Japanese sources in her study: Nagai and Kobatake’s collection Seiyō gakufu nihon zokkyoku shū (1891), Collection of Japanese Koto Music (1888), Chūgaku shōka shū (1901), and Yōchien shōka shū (1889). Girardi and Groos base their discussions of Puccini’s borrowings of Japanese melodies on Powils-Okano’s study, referring to the same sources. Budden does not list any Japanese sources. See Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 48–9; Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 52–3; and Girardi, Puccini, 212–5.

confirms Puccini’s familiarity with the music in this collection and provides significant insight

into Puccini’s compositional process. Furthermore, a consideration of the circumstances in which

Dittrich created his work sheds light onto yet another influence of modernization and

Westernization of Japan on Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. In this chapter, I will briefly discuss the

life of Rudolf Dittrich and his career as a music teacher in Japan, provide a description of Nippon

Gakufu, demonstrate the resemblances between Nippon Gakufu and Madama Butterfly, and

evaluate the impact of Dittrich’s work on Puccini’s opera, especially in his musical

characterization of Cio-Cio-San.

Although travels to the Far East were possible by the late nineteenth century, Japan was,

for many European musicians, still a distant land, unlike the Middle East or North Africa which composers such as Saint-Saëns and Puccini had visited. The earliest European musicians to live in Japan for an extended period, such as Fenton and Guttig, were those who served in the various

European armed forces stationed in Yokohama. Japanese musicians of the Satsuma clan’s militia and later the nationally organized Navy Ministry received instructions in Western music from these foreign teachers. When the Meiji government established a national education system based on Western models in 1872, it also looked toward European and American music education.5 A government committee was created in order to investigate Japanese and Western music, create music textbooks, and train music teachers. Musicians from Europe and the United

States were hired to aid in this project, circumstances that gave Dittrich a rare opportunity as a musician to gain access to Japanese musicians and their music.

5 Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music, passim.

Dittrich (1861–1919) was born in Biała, a city located in southwestern Poland near the

Czech border, which was then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He received a solid music

education in the Austro-German tradition and was enrolled at the Wiener Konservatorium from

1878 to 1882, studying violin with Joseph and Georg Hellmesbergers and organ, theory, and

composition with Anton Bruckner.6 After graduating from the conservatory, Dittrich worked in

Vienna as a freelance musician without a secure post. An opportunity arose in 1888 when he

received an invitation to Japan as “artistic director” at the recently established Tokyo School of

Music (Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō 東京音楽学校).7

The Tokyo School of Music has its roots in the Music Investigation Committee (Ongaku

Torishirabe Gakari 音楽取調掛), which was founded in 1879 as an auxiliary institution attached

to the Education Ministry’s Tokyo Normal School (Tōkyō Shihan Gakkō 東京師範学校). In the

proposal “A Plan Regarding Music Investigation” (Ongaku torishirabe-ni tsuke mikomi-sho 音

楽取り調べに付け見込書), the director of the Tokyo Normal School, Isawa Shūji (1851–

1917), enumerated three principles of the Music Investigation Committee: the compilation and

composition of songs suitable for singing in grade schools (shōka 唱歌), the training of future

music educators who would teach these songs, and the experimental instruction of these songs in

the elementary school attached to the Tokyo Normal School.8 Isawa, who observed the public

6 August Göllerich, Anton Bruckner: Ein Lebens- und Schaffens-Bild, ed. Max Auer, vol. 4, part 1 (Regensburg: Gustave Bosse, 1936), 587.

7 Ibid.

8 Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music, 52.

school system in Boston from 1874 to 1878 and was particularly impressed by the works of the

music educator Luther Whiting Mason (1828–1896), held the manner in which Western music was integrated into Boston’s educational curriculum in high esteem. He, therefore, suggested “to work out a ‘compromise’ between both European and oriental music” in the same proposal.9 To fulfill this aim, he contracted with a series of foreign musicians as instructors of Western music, including Mason (1880–1882), Franz Eckert (1882–1886), and Guillaume Sauvlet (1886–1888).

In 1887 the Music Investigation Committee renamed itself the Tokyo Music School and became an independent institution from the Tokyo Normal School. By the time of Sauvlet’s appointment in 1886, the Music Investigation Committee had fulfilled its initial goal of compiling and publishing collections of songs that were to be used in elementary schools, and it was moving toward training music educators as well as professional musicians.10 To the officials of the

Tokyo Music School, Dittrich’s qualifications as a performer as well as his training in music

theory and composition at one of the most prestigious music schools in Europe must have been

appealing.

Once in Japan, Dittrich held numerous responsibilities both in and out of the Tokyo

Music School. As an “artistischer Direktor,” his duties at the institution included giving violin

lessons, teaching harmony and composition, and editing and arranging school songs.11 Outside

9 Ibid.

10 Nakamura, Yōgaku dōnyūsha, 706.

11 Several volumes of shōka had been published by the time Dittrich arrived in Japan, the first two of which were monophonic, but later collections contained polyphonic settings of songs. Japanese musicians at this time were not able to harmonize these songs and trusted the foreign instructors to arrange them. (Nakamura, Yōgaku dōnyūsha, 277.)

the school, he appeared in concerts and balls at Rokumeikan, a building dedicated to the entertainment of foreign diplomats and dignitaries, as a conductor, violinist, and pianist.12 His position as an instructor at the Tokyo Music School and his personal relationships with Japanese musicians exposed him to a great deal of Japanese music, including the pieces that he arranged for Nippon Gakufu.

Despite his successful career in Japan, the Sino-Japanese war, which began in 1894, forced Dittrich to return to Europe. He settled in Vienna and resumed his life as a freelance musician there until 1901, when he was appointed alongside Bruckner as one of the three organists of the Hapsburg court. He also held a post as an organ professor at the Vienna conservatory from 1906.13 Once again his career was cut short, this time by heart disease, which

took his life in 1919.14 Dittrich came to Japan at a crucial point in the country’s music history, a

time when the government was rigorously encouraging the introduction of Western music into its

educational curriculum. Although he never had the opportunity to return to Japan, he published two sets of Japanese songs arranged for piano that reveal his deep understanding of and appreciation for Japanese music and culture.

12 Hiroko Hirasawa 平沢博子, “Ditorihhi to oyatoi gaikokujin ongakuka tachi” ディトリッヒとお雇い外国人音楽家たち (Dittrich and foreign musicians), notes to Oyatoi gaikokujin no mita nihon: Nihon yōgaku kotohajime お雇い外国人の見た日本~日本洋楽事始 (Japan through the eyes of foreign employees: The beginnings of Western music in Japan), Kenji Maeda 前田健治, King International KKCC 3001, 2001, compact disc, 10.

13 Martin Haselböck, preface to Wiener Hoforganisten (1880–1918): Bruckner, Dittrich, Fuchs, ed. Martin Haselböck (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1996), v.

14 Hirasawa, 10.

Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu consists of two volumes. The first was published in 1894 and contains piano arrangements of six “Japanese Volkslieder/Japanese Popular Songs.” The second volume, published the following year as Nippon Gakufu: zweite Serie, contains arrangements of

ten additional “Japanische Lieder/Japanese songs.” The title page of the first volume features a

colored illustration of scenes of Japanese life, signed by the art-print shop (Kunst-Druckerei) of

T. Hasegawa in Tokyo, each scene corresponding to the subject of one of the songs in the

collection. At the center, the title of the collection Nippon Gakufu is printed in the Roman

alphabet as well as in Chinese characters. Dittrich’s name appears on the right hand side as

arranger, along with the subtitle of the collection in German and English. Inside, the individual

pieces also have titles and texts in Romanized Japanese with German and English translations

beneath them. The musical settings themselves, however, resemble romantic salon music in their

brevity, harmonic language, and detailed dynamic, articulation, and pedal markings. Dittrich’s

treatments of the text and music of the Japanese songs seems contradictory at first. While he is

concerned with accurately communicating the meaning of the original Japanese text, the

Japanese melodies are thoroughly integrated into the style of piano writing of the late nineteenth

century. Nevertheless, Dittrich’s settings of the Japanese melodies in Nippon Gakufu reveal his

deep understanding of Japanese culture and music, and they reflect the spirit of Meiji Japan,

which aimed for the “compromise” between Japanese and Western cultures in general.

One of the remarkable aspects of Nippon Gakufu is the transliterated Japanese texts and

the German and English translations for each piece. The extent to which Dittrich was involved in

the transliteration and translation is not apparent from the publication. Systematic investigation

of Japanese music by the Music Investigation Committee and Tokyo Music School had been

continuing since 1879, and it is probable that transcriptions of Japanese songs and translations of

texts into European languages were available to him when he arrived to Japan. The translations, for the most part, follow the poetic structures of the originals closely and provide detailed

explanations of onomatopoeia, idiomatic expressions, puns, and archaic Japanese words. Many

pieces also include prose descriptions, which provide the Western audience with general

information about the songs as well as the original contexts in which they are sung (see

Appendix 1). Considering the length of his stay in Japan (1886–94), it is unlikely that Dittrich

would have mastered the Japanese language well enough to provide these translations and

commentaries. His indications of solo and chorus parts in “Jisuki-Uta” and “Kon-In No Uta,”

however, may hint at his awareness of the musical structure and the textual content of the songs.

The cover illustration of the first volume discussed above also provides visual commentaries on

the pieces, which together with the textual component of Nippon Gakufu, demonstrate, if not

Dittrich’s, then his collaborators’ efforts to provide an accurate and informative portrayal of

Japanese music and customs.

In Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu, Japanese melodies are completely assimilated into the

normative musical language of late nineteenth-century Western European tradition, making the

collection devoid of any hints of Japanese influence beside the original melodies one might

expect from such collection. Dittrich sets the Japanese melodies within the framework of

functional tonality and embellishes them with chromatic harmonies. The accompanimental

figures span a wide range of the piano and form thick and occasionally contrapuntal textures.

Dittrich carefully indicates tempo, dynamic, articulation, pedal, and other expressive markings in

each piece. There are occasional instances of nonfunctional and unusual harmonic passages, such

as the measure of unharmonized melody doubled in four octaves in “Jizuki-Uta” or the modal-

sounding final cadence in the left-hand part of “Sakura” (see Examples 16a and16b) However,

these passages and similar ones are too few to be considered strong indications of Japanese musical influence on his work.

In contrast to the detailed textual commentary on each piece, Dittrich’s reluctance to demonstrate his technical knowledge of Japanese music in Nippon Gakufu is somewhat puzzling.

It may be that he did not possess such knowledge at all, although it is unlikely since he was involved in the project of “investigating” Japanese music at the school of music. The predominantly Western musical style of Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu, however, is perhaps best understood as a manifestation of the composer’s musical background and the conservative leanings that prevented him from breaking away from the tonal language of his time. Although

during the late nineteenth century, many composers, especially French ones, participated in the

creation and development of the partly imagined musical conventions associated with the exotic

Other, musical exoticism was perhaps less an interest for the conservative instrumental

composers in Vienna.15 To some forward-looking Western composers, such as Debussy—

Dittrich’s contemporary—actual contact with exotic music inspired them to question their musical values and to explore new boundaries. However, it is unlikely, considering Dittrich’s traditional music education with Bruckner and other conservatives in Vienna, that he saw in the settings of Japanese melodies an opportunity to experiment with and to expand his own harmonic language. The colorful illustrations and intriguing musical and cultural commentaries were

15 See Bellman, “The Hungarian Gypsies and the Poetics of Exclusion,” in The Exotic in Western Music, 74–103; and Locke, “Cutthroat and Casbah Dancers, Muezzins and Timeless Sands: Musical Images of the Middle East,” in The Exotic in Western Music, 104–36.

added, perhaps, to satisfy the Western consumers’ taste for the exotic, an element that was significantly lacking in Dittrich’s music.

It is also profitable to place Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu within the framework of the musical ideology that governed the Tokyo Music School. The “compromise” between the two musical traditions that Isawa proposed was carried out in the compilation of several volumes of school songs. The majority of the songs collected and edited by the Music Investigation

Committee were, however, of Western origin, and they were supplied with new Japanese texts.

Dittrich, on the other hand, supplied Western harmony to Japanese music. It is also notable that

Dittrich drew primarily from genres of Japanese popular music that Isawa considered inferior to

Western music and improper for children’s education such as hauta. In fact Dittrich’s “Ha-Uta” is one of the two pieces in Nippon Gakufu that lack lyrics, an omission that was undoubtedly caused by Isawa and others’ reluctance to explain its content to a foreign music professor on account of its vulgar content.16 Although Dittrich’s work was created for European and

American consumers, presumably it was also available to consumers in Japan. In Japan

Dittrich’s work may have served as an alternate model for the “compromise” between Western and Japanese music that Isawa pioneered, combining Japanese melodies with Western functional harmony. Despite the seeming contradiction between the amount of factual information about

Japanese music in the commentaries and Dittrich’s Westernizing approach in his musical

16 “Ha-Uta” in Nippon Gakufu is described as “Literally: LEAF-SONG, i.e. ‘Album Leaf.’ A Lyric with shamisen accompaniment.” It is not entirely clear from the translation, but the title of the piece refers not to a particular song but a genre of song. According to Eppstein, hauta was one of the types of music that Isawa, employer of Dittrich, found particularly vulgar and shameful. Since Dittrich most likely acquired information about the Japanese music from his Japanese colleagues at the music school, the translation of the particular hauta that Dittrich heard, perhaps, was not available to him. (Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music, 53.)

settings, Nippon Gakufu reveals a concern for the integration of Japanese and Western music at

the tine.

Musicological studies on Madama Butterfly largely ignore Puccini’s familiarity with

Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu. However, Dittrich’s arrangements published by Breitkopf & Härtel

and appearing several years before Puccini started composing the opera, would have been more

readily available to him than the Japanese publications that Powils-Okano and Groos suggest.17

Indeed, a comparison of Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly reveals a close relationship between the two. In this section, I will identify Puccini’s borrowings from

Dittrich’s collections and evaluate their impact on the musical characterization of Cio-Cio-San.

The discussion will also respond to some of the claims made by other scholars about Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies.

Puccini incorporated four pieces from Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu into Madama Butterfly:

“Hat-Uta,” “Sakura,” “O Yedo Nihon-Bashi,” and “Jizuki-Uta.”18 Fragments of “Ha-Uta” and

“Sakura” appear in Act I when Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton retreat into their new house before the wedding ceremony. The music based on the first measure of “Ha-Uta” prompts Cio-Cio-San to ask Pinkerton if he would like to see her “little feminine things.” Dittrich’s opening chord of

17 Powils-Okano suggests that Puccini acquired Nagai and Kobatake’s Collection of Japanese Popular Musics (1891), Collection of Japanese Koto Music (1888), Chūgaku shōka shū, second volume (1901), and Yōchien shōka shū (1889) from Ōyama. Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,”48–9. Groos theorizes that Puccini purchased Nagai and Kobatake’s Collection of Japanes Popular Musics in Milan when he attended Sadayakko and Kawakami’s performance in 1902. Groos, “Cio-Cio-San and Sadayakko,” 53.

18 Puccini drew “Sakura” and “Jizuki-Uta” from the 1894 collection and “Ha-Uta” and “O Yedo Nihon-Bashi” from 1895 collection.

“Ha-Uta” is composed of two interlocking perfect fifth intervals (A-E and E-B). Puccini

modifies Dittrich’s harmony by substituting the doubled E with F-sharp, stacking three perfect

fifth intervals (A-E, E-B, and B-F-sharp) (see Examples 17a and 17b). Puccini’s chromatic

alteration in the second bar from C to C-sharp, together with the added F-sharp, indicates a

modal shift from A minor in Dittrich’s original to A major. The short melodic fragments reappear four more times in the remainder of the scene in the original key of A minor (see

Example 17c). Similarly, Puccini incorporates the melodic as well as harmonic structures of

Dittrich’s “Sakura” in the same scene (see Examples 18a and 18b). Dittrich’s melody is kept intact, including some expressive markings such as the accent on the second half of the first two measures and the crescendo on the third measure of the excerpt. Puccini alters Dittrich’s harmonies only slightly. The arpeggiated pizzicato accompaniment in the ’cellos that lasts for two measures betrays the passage’s origin as a piano piece. The key is altered from D minor to E

minor, probably in order to accommodate a smoother transition from the previous passage in A

minor.

The opening phrase of “O Yedo Nihon-Bashi” appears prominently in the wedding scene

in Act I of Madama Butterfly. The first five measures of the passage in E minor immediately

following the Japanese official and Goro’s announcement of the newlywed couple are almost

identical to mm. 4–8 of Dittrich’s piece in its melodic as well as harmonic structure (see

Examples 19a and 19b). Both are in the key of E minor. The second half of measure 7 from the

original is omitted in Puccini’s score, enabling him to place the dominant chord on the downbeat

of the next measure. Puccini develops the melody later in the passage, harmonizing it with

augmented triads, adding an original touch to it. In Act II, when Sharpless visits Cio-Cio-San,

the passage reappears in E-minor with slight rhythmic as well as harmonic modifications (see

Example 19c).

While the previous examples of borrowings are fragmentary, Puccini takes the entire structure of “Jizuki-Uta” in order to compose Cio-Cio-San’s Act II aria, “Che tua madre.” The

first eleven measures of her aria correspond almost exactly, both melodically and harmonically, to the opening of Dittrich’s work (see Examples 20 and 21a). Puccini’s passage is in A-flat minor, as opposed to Dittrich’s in A minor, and Puccini deviates slightly from the original in

measure 7, reshaping the music neatly into two four-measure antecedent and consequent phrases.

In the original piece, a contrasting “chorus of workmen” follows this passage, characterized by

the bold, march-like accompaniment in octaves in the left hand. Puccini substitutes another for

this section of the song, equally contrasting, borrowing a Japanese song “Suiryō-bushi” from

Nagai’s collection in the aria. Puccini does not harmonize the melody of “Suiryō-bushi,” but sets

the melody in octaves over a C-flat/E-flat dyad and later an A-flat-minor triad in the brass, a

gesture that echoes the forceful octave doublings in Dittrich’s chorus (see Examples 20, mm. 14–

20 and 21b). After a brief interlude in B major, which features another Japanese melody,

“Kappore hōnen,” Dittrich’s “Jizuki-Uta” returns, capped off with an abbreviated version of

“Suiryō-bushi.”19 The form of the aria (A B C A’ B’) expands Dittrich’s (A B A B) in “Jitzuki-

Uta.”

The overall harmonic structure and one particular measure of the chorus of “Jizuki-Uta”

play a key role in the opera. The chorus, beginning in A minor, briefly tonicizes the mediant chord (C major) and moves to a bold stepwise ascending gesture that outlines an augmented

19 Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 55–8.

fourth interval in four octaves, suggesting a modulation to G major. The passage, however, culminates on the dominant seventh chord above an E, redirecting itself to the tonic key. The same harmonic motion and the augmented fourth melodic fragment are found in the middle section of the opera’s central and iconic aria “Un bel dì” in Act II. The aria, which opens in G- flat major, modulates to F-minor in measure 19 and remains there until the return of the opening material at measure 49. In the F-minor middle section, Puccini hints at a modulation to A-flat major (mediant) in measures 32 and 33, but the dominant of F minor is confirmed in measure 37 after a statement of the augmented fourth gesture in four octaves identical to the gesture in

“Jizuki-Uta” discussed above (see Example 22). These and other resemblances between the two works discussed in previous paragraphs confirm Puccini’s appropriation of Dittrich’s Nippon

Gakufu.

Puccini uses Dittrich’s materials only during the scenes that feature Cio-Cio-San’s psychological struggle. In the scene directly preceding Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton’s wedding ceremony in Act I and “Che tua madre,” Dittirch’s melodies seem to betray Cio-Cio-San’s

Japanese essence that comes through despite her effort at concealing it during her interaction with Pinkerton and Sharpless. In the first passage, the slightly modified version of “Ha-Uta” provides a backdrop for Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton’s dialogue. Once Cio-Cio-San becomes engrossed in displaying her exotic belongings to Pinkerton, the piece resumes its original melodic and harmonic form, as if to indicate her return to a Japanese mindset. The orchestral background flows smoothly into a quotation of “Sakura,” whose melody Cio-Cio-San occasionally sings as she retrieves more objects from her sleeves and converses with Pinkerton.

Neither of Dittrich’s pieces causes her to recede completely into her Japanese world in Act I, but rather represents Cio-Cio-San’s careful balancing of her Japanese origins and her adopted

American identity that she assumes when interacting with Pinkerton. However, her “American”

identity collapses in Act II at the thought of her husband not returning to Nagasaki. Cio-Cio-San

cannot address Sharpless, who suggests that Pinkerton may not come back, but instead sings to

her child. Gradually she picks up the lugubrious melody of “Jizuki-Uta” and two other Japanese

melodies that lurk in the background, developing them into a highly dramatic aria, “Che tua

madre.” This aria, unlike any other of Butterfly’s arias in the opera, is based entirely on Japanese

or Japanese-influenced music, emphasizing her sense of isolation from Pinkerton and inability to

maintain a Western identity.

Puccini treats “O Yedo Nihon Bashi” and the augmented fourth melodic fragment from

“Jizuki-Uta” as recurring thematic materials. The excerpt from “O Yedo Nihon Bashi” appears

for the first time after Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton have signed their marriage contract. Cio-Cio-

San’s friends call her “Madama Butterfly” which she promptly corrects “Madama F. B.

Pinkerton.”20 The theme’s recurrence in Act II accompanies a similar exchange between

Sharpless and Butterfly, reminding the audience of the marriage that took place three years

earlier and Cio-Cio-San’s blind belief in it. The augmented fourth fragment from “Jizuki-Uta”

first appears in Cio-Cio-San’s aria “Un bel dì.” The fragment, which in the aria is associated with

Cio-Cio-San’s hope for Pinkerton’s return, recurs during the instrumental interlude in Act II and during the closing scene of the opera. The first recurrence refers to Pinkerton’s actual return to

Nagasaki and the second to his return to Butterfly’s house. Although Puccini’s musical

20 In the 1904 Milan version, the name of the tenor hero was Sir Francis Blummy Pinkerton. Illica reverted to the original name in Long’s short story, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, for the subsequent versions, but Pinkerton is frequently referred to as “F. B. Pinkerton” in Ricordi’s orchestral score. (Groos, “Lieutenant F. B. Pinkerton,” 196.)

borrowings so far are immediately perceptible, a closer examination demonstrates aspects of

Puccini’s careful planning that may not be so obvious.

These analyses of the musical borrowings in “Un bel dì” and “Che tua madre” reveal

Puccini’s sophisticated manipulation of borrowed materials. Groos discusses how these two arias are related in that they expose Cio-Cio-San’s oriental failure to live outside of her imagined world and to see her life as it really is. In addition to the textual similarities between the two arias, a common musical element, namely Puccini’s borrowing of “Jizuki-Uta,” strengthens their association even further. While Puccini adapted two of the four pieces in Dittrich’s original keys

(“Ha-Uta” and “O Yedo Nihon-Bashi”), he chose to set the first half of “Jizuki-Uta,” originally in A minor, in the remote key of A-flat minor in “Che tua madre,” and the augmented fourth fragment from the chorus of the piece, originally in C major, in A-flat major/F minor in “Un bel dì.” Although the relative major/minor relationship between the two passages in the original is replaced by parallel major/minor relationship between the two passages in the opera, Puccini maintains the tonal integrity of the original piece, which he borrows for two separate arias. The two arias, despite their similarities, portray Cio-Cio-San’s two very different psychological states, a contrast that is illustrated musically by the number and types of musical borrowings.

While in “Un bel dì” Cio-Cio-San’s confidence in Pinkerton’s return is still strong and she is able to present her musical discourse without many Japanese musical references, “Che tua madre” is based entirely on borrowings from three Japanese numbers. Her confidence is shattered, and her musical language becomes increasingly “Japanese.” Puccini juxtaposes the fragments from two arias in the final scene of the opera as the augmented fourth fragment form

“Un bel dì,” indicating Pinkerton’s return, is followed by a violent orchestra tutti statement of

“Suiryō-bushi” from “Che tua madre.” The thematic unity of the two arias, however, is not

apparent without knowledge of the original Japanese pieces. Although it may seem uncharacteristic of Puccini to create a musical structure that is not immediately apparent, the musical borrowings in the two arias represent his concern with a more abstract musical construct than is traditionally credited to him.21

Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu adds another dimension to the question of Puccini’s awareness of the original meanings of the texts associated with the Japanese melodies and to the debate covering the benefits of taking them into consideration in analyzing the opera. There is no doubt that Puccini was able to access the information Dittrich had carefully incorporated into his collection and to become aware of the meanings and symbolisms of the four Japanese melodies that he used in his opera. Whether or not his understanding of the meanings and symbolisms of the melodies is reflected in his opera is another issue.

Despite Powils-Okano’s claims that Puccini was aware of the symbolism in the Japanese music, the associations of the four songs from Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu seem to have, at best, little significance to Puccini’s opera. Dittrich obscured information about “Ha-Uta,” which

Powils-Okano does not list in her study. Although Powils-Okano suggests a strong connection between “preciousness” (Kostbarkeit) and “viewing” (Betrachten) that the song symbolizes in connection with Cio-Cio-San’s display of her precious and sacred belongings, there is nothing in

Dittrich’s commentary on “Sakura” that associates those “key words” (Schlüsselworte) with the

21 In their respective biographies, Girardi and Budden demonstrate Puccini’s large-scale manipulation of key relationships in the opera.

piece.22 According to Powils-Okano, the text of “O Yedo Nihon-Bashi” “is about a feudal lord’s

first trip to the imperial city of Kyoto where he will pay a visit to the emperor.”23 She draws a

parallel between a Japanese feudal lord’s first visit and the beginning of Cio-Cio-San’s new life.

Although the text describes a journey starting in Tokyo and heading towards Kyoto, there are few indications in Dittrich’s explanation about “a feudal lord’s first trip to Kyoto.”24 Powils-

Okano does not discuss “Jizuki-Uta” in her monograph, but the piece’s subtitle, “Workmen’s

Song,” does have a certain connection with Butterfly’s imagined return to the life of an

entertainer as a geisha that she sings of in “Che tua madre.” Puccini, however, made a drastic

revision of the text of this particular aria, transforming it from “wonderful to sad song” for the

French version of the opera, thus making the similarity an accidental one.25 Although it is

conceivable that Puccini collected additional information about the Japanese melodies not

available in Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu from his meetings with Ōyama and other sources, many of

the parallels that Powils-Okano draws, including the ones discussed above, are not convincing.

Another question concerning Puccini’s appropriation of Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu is its

position in the broader discussion of orientalism. Michael Beckerman suggests that Sullivan’s

adaptation of “Miyasan” in The Mikado is a manifestation of the process in which “Japanese

22 Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 58.

23 “Das Populärlied stammt aus der Edo-Periode (1603–1867). Sein Text handelt von der ersten Reise eines Feudalherrn nach der Kaiserstadt Kyōto, wo er dem Kaiser seine Aufwartung machen wird.” (Ibid., 54.)

24 Powils-Okano also notes the possibility that Puccini is referring to Loti’s novel in which Yedo is referred to as the place of Kikou San’s mother’s conservatory for geisha. (Ibid.)

25 Carner, Puccini, 440.

musical materials are altered from the outset to conform to a Westerner’s idea of what Japanese

music ‘ought’ to be.”26 Even with the alterations, “the tune stands out conspicuously from most

of the surrounding material in the opera,” because of the lack of Western harmony.27 Although the quotations of “Suiryō-bushi,” which is also set monophonically, are obvious, most of the passages in Puccini’s opera discussed above do not stand out quite as conspicuously as

Sullivan’s. Puccini made few alterations to Dittrich’s richly chromatic settings of Japanese melodies, blending them seamlessly into his own music. Puccini’s assimilation of Dittrich’s music was so complete that, for example, the existence of Japanese elements in the opening of

“Che tua madre” has evaded the eyes and ears of previous musicologists. Dittrich’s harmonization of Japanese melodies, which made the pieces sound more Western than Japanese, may be considered an act that forced Japanese music to fit into the framework of Western music.

Dittrich, however, clearly indicates that the pieces in Nippon Gakufu are arrangements of

Japanese songs, not representations of authentic Japanese music. Furthermore, such examples of a harmonious co-existence of both Western and Japanese musical elements embody the modernizing spirit of Meiji Japan. What emerges from Puccini’s borrowings of Dittrich’s Nippon

Gakufu is not superficial exoticism or a demeaning caricature of Japanese music, but a carefully

planned musical portrayal of Cio-Cio-San’s psychological struggle to balance her Japanese and

Western identities.

The comparison of Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly reveals

important aspects of Puccini’s borrowings. He incorporates fragments of “Ha-Uta,” “Sakura,”

26 Beckerman, “The Sword on the Wall,” 318.

27 Ibid., 307.

and “O Yedo Nihon-Bashi” and a significant portion of “Jizuki-Uta” in order to characterize Cio-

Cio-San musically. Rather than simply taking the melodies of these pieces, Puccini adopts

Dittrich’s entire harmonic fabric and orchestrates them. Since Dittrich’s harmonic treatments of

the Japanese melodies are strictly grounded in traditional Western harmony, they mesh easily

with Puccini’s own late Romantic style. Although the translations of the accompanying texts and

explanations of symbolisms were available to Puccini, he was likely less concerned with them

than Powils-Okano suggests. His musical manipulations of Dittrich’s pieces are too incidental to

be considered as manifestations of orientalism. What we can deduce from such an examination is that Puccini carefully portrayed Cio-Cio-San’s psychological development and chose Dittrich’s

Nippon Gakufu to characterize her. As in Puccini’s use of “Kimigayo” we can also note the

significance of another effect of Japanese modernization and westernization on Puccini’s opera.

CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

In this thesis I have demonstrated the close relationships between some of the Japanese

melodies that Puccini adopted in his opera Madama Butterfly, including “Miyasan,” “Kimigayo,”

“Ha-Uta,” “Sakura,” “O Yedo Nihon-Bashi,” and “Jizuki-Uta,” and the Westernization of Japan

in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many critics and musicologists have commented on

Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies, treating the tunes Puccini used as authentic specimens of

Japanese music; however, upon examination of the historical and cultural circumstances in

which these pieces were created, many of them turn out to be products of complex cultural

exchanges between Japan and the West. Recognition of this historical background not only places the Japanese melodies that Puccini used in their original context, but also gives us further insights into Puccini’s construction of the dramatic tension of the opera in general and his characterization of Cio-Cio-San in particular.

Traditional studies of the opera, such as those of Mosco Carner and Julian Budden, claim that Puccini’s use of Japanese melodies is a standard exotic device employed to evoke a local color. It is true that there was a certain amount of expectation from the audience for Puccini’s use of exotic musical materials. As Locke points out, “Oriental-style numbers, such as ballets, tended to be enormously appealing to audiences (and performers) back then, as they still are today.”1

The New York Times review discussed in the first chapter, commenting on Puccini’s use of

1 Locke, “Cutthroats and Casbah Dancers,” 127.

Japanese music, illustrates this mindset. Does Puccini, with his use of Japanese melodies in

Madama Butterfly, simply “provide local color or exoticism for its own sake?”2 I disagree.

Although the opera’s exotic setting is one of its most appealing elements, Puccini in many

instances integrates Japanese melodies into the musical fabric for specific dramatic effects.

Other musicologists, such as Kimiyo Powils-Okano and Michele Girardi, maintain that with his quotations of Japanese music, the composer alludes to a complex web of Japanese symbolism, adding another dimension to the meaning of the opera. Although many of Powils-

Okano’s insights about the symbolism of Japanese music are fascinating and illuminating, they

seem to be too esoteric for typical audiences of the opera. Although it is certainly possible that

Ōyama Hisako communicated much about Japanese music and its symbolism to Puccini, it is

unclear how Puccini would have incorporated the symbolism or how he would have expected his

audiences to recognize it. Furthermore, as Groos has demonstrated, Powils-Okano’s arguments

are tenuous and contain factual errors. Girardi adopts much of Powils-Okano’s discussion and

commits similar errors of oversimplifying Japanese history and cultural associations.

Still others, such as Arthur Groos and Ralph Locke, consider Puccini’s use of Japanese

melodies as an essential component of an exaggerated caricature of Japanese culture that the

opera depicts. The musical characterization of Bonze, Cio-Cio-San’s uncle, for example, fits

perfectly into the “orientalist” convention of the depiction of an exotic male despot.3

Orientalism, however, is a tricky concept to apply in Madama Butterfly, because of the political

2 Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama, new and revised ed. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Pres, 1988), 206. Also see Locke’s response to Kerman in “Cutthroats and Casbah Dancers.”

3 Locke, “Reflections on Orientalism,” 56–61.

and cultural situation of Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike in the

Middle East or South Asia, Western powers did not colonize Japan. Japan did experience the

influence of Western civilization, but its Westernization was an important component of the

Meiji government’s self-motivated project for modernization. To complicate the issue further,

Japanese and Western musicians combined their traditions in order to create new styles of music

suitable for Japan’s modernity. For example, Puccini’s quotation of Franz Eckert’s

harmonization of “Kimigayo,” because of its tonal harmony, sounded Western to Budden.4

Eckert’s version of “Kimigayo,” being one of the most recognizable symbols of Japan’s nationhood, sounds unquestionably Japanese to me. Puccini and contemporary Western audiences probably would have agreed with Budden. My point, however, still stands: because of the complex cultural implications of the nature of the Japanese pieces that Puccini used in his opera, we must carefully consider their specific historical and cultural contexts in order to fully appreciate their significance in the opera.

Many Japanese musicians, including Nagai Iwai, Kobatake Kenpachirō, and Isawa Shūji, adopted Western musical notation and published collections of transcriptions of Japanese melodies, including “Miyasan,” for educational purposes. “Miyasan” was a popular song describing the Satsuma army’s march eastward to Edo during the Boshin Conflict of 1868–9 that marked the regime change from the Tokugawa shogunate to the Meiji government. The song is said to have originated during the civil conflict, but remained popular throughout the Meiji Era as a reminder of the victory of the new social order. Two almost identical versions of the song

4 Budden, Puccini, 250.

appeared in Nagai and Kobatake’s Collection of Japanese Popular Musics (1891) and Isawa’s

Shōgaku shōka (1892). Nagai and Kobatake, leaders of a Japanese military band, intended to familiarize their subordinates with Western musical notation with their transcriptions of famous

or popular Japanese melodies. Similarly, Isawa’s collection was also planned as a music

textbook to be used in elementary schools, instructing students how to sing and read music. It is

not clear how these collections became available to the composer: they might have been

commercially available in Europe, or else Puccini could have acquired them through Ōyama

Hisako—a more likely scenario. In either case, Puccini’s musical representations of “Miyasan”

betray traces of both versions, suggesting his reliance on both collections.

In addition to the symbolic associations that Mosco Carner, Kimiyo Powils-Okano, and

Julian Budden propose that Puccini made with his use of the tune, we can consider Puccini’s use

of “Miyasan” as an essential component in the dramatic organization in the first section of Act II.

Puccini features the tune prominently during the conversation between Cio-Cio-San and

Sharpless, who has come to read the letter from Pinkerton and to relay his request for his and

Cio-Cio-San’s child. Cio-Cio-San’s mindless chatter, accompanied by the opening measures of

“Miyasan,” interrupts Sharpless’s attempts to engage her in a serious conversation. The dramatic tension of the scene grows as Sharpless’s frustration mounts, culminating in the spectacular entrance of Prince Yamadori set to a quotation of the entire song. Cio-Cio-San’s deep faith in

Pinkerton becomes evident during the exchange between her and Yamadori. The somber and reflective setting of “Miyasan” that accompanies Yamadori’s exit hints at the impending tragedy of the opera as well as a shift in Cio-Cio-San’s characterization from a charming, naïve girl to a tragic, mature heroine.

The checkered history of “Kimigayo” began in 1869 when Japanese political leaders

became aware of the concept of national anthem, resulting in a cross-cultural collaboration in the

quest of establishing a Japanese national identity. The Satsuma clan’s army hired a British military bandleader stationed in Yokohama, William Fenton, to train their newly established band. The instruction began in 1869, and Fenton quickly noticed the lack of a national anthem in

the band’s repertoire. The leaders of the Satsuma clan recognized the gravity of this deficiency in

the international world and collaborated with Fenton in the creation of the anthem. The Satsuma

clansmen selected a text based on a ninth-century Japanese poetry, but they did not like Fenton’s

setting of it. Nevertheless, Fenton’s “Kimigayo” was performed on several occasions by the navy

band as well as the court orchestra. Fenton’s leave in 1876 prompted Japanese leaders to

abandon his version of the anthem and to come up with a more appropriate setting of the text. In

1880 a court musician, Oku, composed a new setting of the text in the ancient gagaku style,

which a German music instructor and successor of Fenton in the Japanese Navy, Franz Eckert,

harmonized. This second version of “Kimigayo” was received well among the Japanese leaders,

but did not achieve a consensus among rest of the population as a national anthem until much

later. It was nevertheless presented to foreign officials as a national anthem, and Ōyama, as the

wife of the Japanese ambassador to Italy, would have doubtless presented the piece as such to

Puccini.

Puccini’s use of “Kimigayo” not only provides audiences an aural cue to the Japanese

setting, but also works to exclude Cio-Cio-San from Westernized and modernized Japan.

Conventional interpretations of Puccini’s use of “Kimigayo” in the marriage scene in Act I

claims that the song introduces Japanese officials, creating a clear, audible contrast with “The

Star Spangled Banner” in Pinkerton’s aria, “Dovunque al mondo” earlier in the act. A fragment of it returns in Act II when Cio-Cio-San compares Japanese and American marriage laws. In these instances, Puccini clearly invokes Japanese and American national anthems in order to highlight the cultural and political differences between the two main characters. More significant, however, is Puccini’s distancing of Cio-Cio-San from “Kimigayo.” While the opening strain of “The Star Spangled Banner” introduces Pinkerton’s first aria, “Dovunque al mondo,” Puccini does not incorporate “Kimigayo” into any of Cio-Cio-San’s arias. Considering the history of “Kimigayo” and its close relationship with modernization and Westernization of

Meiji Japan, we might interpret Cio-Cio-San’s refusal to sing “Kimigayo” as her failure to embrace Japan’s Westernized modernity.

Another radical impact of Meiji policy of Westernization on Japanese musical life was the establishment of a nationalized music education based on European and American models.

Rather than turning to Japanese traditional music or adopting Western music wholesale, Isawa, the director of the Music Investigation Committee and later the Tokyo School of Music, sought a

“compromise” between the two traditions. He hired a series of American and European musicians as instructors of Western music, including a Viennese organist, Rudolf Dittrich, who lived in Japan from 1888 to 1894. After his return to Vienna, Dittrich published two volumes of piano arrangements of Japanese songs, Nippon Gakufu. Considering his short stay in Japan and the exceptionally detailed commentaries in the collections, Dittrich must have had Japanese collaborators in this project. His harmonic realizations, however, remain strictly within the traditional tonal framework of Western classical music, perhaps a reflection of his conservative training in Vienna. At the same time, Dittrich’s harmonious blend of Japanese melodies and

Western harmony, like Eckert’s setting of “Kimigayo,” expresses Isawa’s ideal of the

“compromise” between the two musical traditions.

Puccini seemed to have found Dittrich’s tonal settings of Japanese melodies extremely

useful, fragmenting and combining them in order to depict Cio-Cio-San’s psychological struggles between her adopted American identity and her Japanese essence. In the scene following Cio-Cio-San and her friends’ entrance in Act I, she and Pinkerton interact face-to-face in their new home. In the course of the scene, Cio-Cio-San displays her exotic belongings,

denounces her ancestral religion, and confides to Pinkerton that she has converted to

Christianity. Carefully rearranged fragments of “Ha-Uta” and “Sakura” from Dittrich’s Nippon

Gakufu underscore Cio-Cio-San’s subtle psychological shifts back and forth between her

Japanese and American identities. Puccini uses “O Yedo Nihon Bashi” during the exchanges

between Cio-Cio-San and her friends immediately following the signing of a wedding contract

and the conversation between Cio-Cio-San and Sharpless in Act II. The Japanese melody

indicates, despite her strong conviction that she has now become an American wife, that Cio-

Cio-San is hopelessly attached to Japanese culture and tradition. Puccini also uses Dittrich’s

“Jizuki-Uta” extensively in her aria “Che tua madre,” combining it with other borrowed melodies, “Suiryō bushi” and “Kapporehōnen,” from Nagai and Kobatake’s collection. The aria, entirely made up of Japanese material, indicates the limit of Cio-Cio-San’s patience for

Pinkerton’s return as well as her struggle with negotiating the two drastically divergent identities.

We can also observe Puccini’s concern with larger formal organization and coherence within the opera. He fashions the overall structure of “Che tua madre” based on that of “Jizuki-Uta” although he substitutes the Japanese song’s chorus section with another completely different melody, “Suiryō-bushi.” Puccini includes a short quotation of “Jizuki-Uta” in Cio-Cio-San’s aria

“Un bel dì,” thematically unifying it with “Che tua madre.” The fragment of “Jizuki-Uta” from

“Un bel dì” and “Suiryō-bushi” from “Che tua madre” return at the final scene of the opera, juxtaposing Cio-Cio-San’s hope for Pinkerton’s return and her despair caused by his betrayal.

Close examination of the historical and cultural factors behind the Japanese melodies that

Puccini used in his opera Madama Butterfly gives us a new appreciation of the opera as a fascinating example of the product of Japanese and Western musical exchanges that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century. Puccini does not provide a cheap imitation of Japanese music in order to satisfy audiences’ expectation for the exotic, but he integrated Japanese music for dramatic ends. Although racism and colonialism are two of the dominant themes of the opera,

Puccini’s use of Japanese music itself does not, I believe, constitute an instance of an orientalist musical appropriation. The Japanese music that Puccini consulted represents a type of music that

Japanese musicians created, with the help of Western musicians, that aimed for the unification of

Japanese and Western musical traditions. Although Powils-Okano’s interpretation of the opera is difficult to accept, it perhaps demonstrates one of the ways to experience the opera as a listener.

The richness of the musical material that Puccini employed and the complex racial, colonial, as well as gender implications of Madama Butterfly continue to fascinate listeners, performers, and scholars and invite them to interpret and reinterpret the opera.

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APPENDIX 1

A SAMPLE OF NOTES FROM DITTRICH’S NIPPON GAKUFU

JIZUKI-UTA. ONDOTORI:—Kimi ga ta to Waga ta wo narase, Aze narase NINSOKU:—Tani no nagare de Kame asobu.

ERDARBEITER-LIED. WORKMEN’S SONG (Beim Einrammen von Pfählen oder Steinen.) (In driving piles or stones.) DER VORARBEITER SINGT: THE FOREMAN SINGS: Lasst uns unsere Felder bearbeite, Let us till our fields, Die Raine ausbessern: Repair the ridges: CHOR DER ARBEITER: CHORUS OF WORKMEN: Dort im murmelnden Thalbach There in the murmuring brook in the dale Vergnügt sich die Schildkröte. The turtle is disporting himself.

GOMBEI* GA TANE MAKU. Gombei ga tane makiya, Karasu ga hojikuru; Sando ni ichido wa Owazuba narumai. **Zumbera, zumbera, Zumbera yo!

GOMBEI SÄET. GOMBEI IS SOWING. (Heiteres, launiges Lied der unteren (A merry, humorous song of the lower Volksschichten.) classes.) Wenn Gombei säet, When Gombei sows seed, Picken die Krähen die Saat wieder auf; The crows pick it up again; In drei Fällen einmal Wird er gezwungen sein, sie wieder At every third turn wegzutreiben. He has to drive them away again.

* Gombei=ein Name. ** Lustiger Ausruf wie: Juvivallera oder * Gombei=a proper name. Duliöh! ** A merry refrain like tralala

89 APPENDIX 2

MUSICAL EXAMPLES

Example 1. Powils-Okano’s representations of “Ume no haru” and “Verbannungsmotiv” from Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 59.

“Ume no haru” œ œ œ c Œ‰œ œ œ ˙ #˙ œ œ #˙ & J œ

#œ œ œ œ œ #˙ œ & œ œ ‰ J œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ “Verbannungsmotiv”

2 œ ˙ œ &4œ œ œ œ œ œ

j œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ & œ . J

90 Example 2.

a) “My Prince,” from Carner, Puccini, 415.

b) “Tonyare-bushi” or “Miyasan” from Powils-Okano, Puccinis “Madama Butterfly,” 54.

c) “Tonyare-bushi” or “Myasan” from Michele Girardi Puccini, 214.

d) “Example 8.23” from Budden, Puccini, 260.

Example 4. The melody of “Miyasan” from Shiiba, Nihon no uta, 9.

94 Example 5. Madama Butterfly, Act II, part 1, 5 measures after 20.

Butterfly Sharpless (without noticing the letter. offers a pipe) (refusing it) œ 2 œ œ œ œ ? bœ & 4 œ œ œ œ J J J J œ bœ ∑ ∑ SiJ - gno - re,J ioJ ve - do il - cie- lo az - zur - ro. Gra - zie... I I cl. . . . . p . . . . 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & 4 ∑ ∑ bœ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ Œ œ ‰ ‰ bœ ‰J ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ bœ ‰J p vl. J J J J J œ œ œ œ. œ. œ bœ. œ. œ œ bœ. œ. œ. œ. ? 2 ∑ ∑ 4 bssn. (finding a way to Butterfly return to the letter) (rests the pipe on a table and asks very thoughtfully) ? œ j j j œ j j r r œ ∑ J & ‰ œ œ œ œ bœ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ Ho... PreJ - fe - ri - te for-seJ J leJ si-gaJ - ret- te a - me-J riJ - ca - ne?...

...... - - . . - . . œ bœ œ bœ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ bœ œ & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ‰ J Œ ‰ ‰ ‰ bœ ‰ J ‰ ‰ ‰ bœ Œ ‰ #œ œ > J > J J œ. œ. œ. . œ œ œ. . - œ œ œ. . - . œ. ? bœ œ œ- bœ œ œ bœ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ

& ∑

> j‰j‰ & nœœ œ f pj j nœ ? #œ ‰n œ ‰ œ œ > œ 95 Example 6. Madama Butterfly, Act II, part 1, 1 measure before 26. Butterfly (interrrupting Sharpless, Allegro continuing her thoughts) j j j j j & 42 r j ‰ j r r œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ Ah,œ si.œ Goœ - ro,œ apœ - pe-naJ J F.J B.J Pin-ker-ton fu in ma - re miœ I 26 Allegro w. winds, vl. . œ œ.. œ...... œ. œ. . 2 œ.. .. œ œ . œ & 4 ∑ ŒŒ œ œ.. ‰ œ œ.. œ œ. ‰ œ π J J 2 ∑ ∑ ˙ ˙ ˙ & 4 ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ vl., >vla. > > >

j j j j j j j & œ œ œ œ œ œ j œ œ œ j j j j j œ œ j ven - ne adJas-seJ - dia - re conœ ciar-le e con preœ - senœ -œ ti perœ riœ - dar - mio-raœ I I

. œ...... >. . œ . œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ. . . œ. œ œ œ. œ. œ œ œ ‰ œ J ‰ & J J

˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ & ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ > > > > >

j j j & œ œ œ j j j Œ questo, or quel - maœ - riœ - to.œ

. . . œ œ œ œ. œ. & J ‰Œ

j œ ‰Œ & ˙ ˙ œ > 96 Example 7. Madama Butterfly, Act I, 8 measures after 74.

Pinkerton 2 œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ V 4 ‰JJ J #œ œ œ R R Œ Oper-chè mai,J miR -R a bel - la But-terR R - flyœ œ ? strings œ œ. #œ #œ œ 2 #œœ. œ # ˙œ œ œ ‰ & 4 J #˙ œœ. œ #œ . #œ œ ? 42 œ #œ œ. ‰ œ œ.

Example 8. a) Madama Butterfly, Act II, part 1, 20. vl. j & œ. bœ œ. œ œ. bœ œ œ œ œ œ ‰Œ 20 > > > >œ bbœ bœ bbœ >œ ? ‰ J ‰J ‰ J ‰J ‰ J Œ bssn., vla., and vc. b) Madama Butterfly, Act II, part 1, 6 measures after 21.

cl. and vl. fl. œ. bœ. bœ. nœ. œ . . nœ. œ. bœ œ. œ œbœbœbœ bœbœœ. bœbœ J ‰Œ & œ. bœ œ. œ œbœ. . . > b>œ b>œ b>œ ? œ b œ œ b œ j j j j j ‰ J ‰J‰ J ‰J& ‰ œ ‰b bœ ‰ bœ ‰ b bœ œœ ‰Œ vla. and vc. bœ b œ b œ b œ bœ > > > > >

97 Example 9. Madama Butterfly, 5 measures before 22. Butterfly (standing up, very cheerfully)

2 j #œ œ j j œ œ & 4 Œ‰ #œ œ œ œ œ J J #œ œ ∑ #Ioœ son la don - na più lieJ - taJ del Giap - po - ne. 22 . . œ. œ. . #œ œ œ 2 j ‰Œ œ #œ #œ œ #œ #œ œ œ œ œ & 4 #œ #œ # œ œ œ #œ œ # œ œ # œ #œ strings #œ w. winds #œ w. winds œ œ p pizz. . #œ #œ #œ. ? 2 .j œ œ œ # œ œ #œ œ # œ 4 #œ ‰Œ œ œ #œ #œ ‰ #œ ‰ œ #œ J J #œ œ π p

j j & ∑ ∑ Œ j œ œ #œ œ #œ j j Œ #Po-œ trei farviJ J u - naJ do - man-da?#œ œ

j ...... #œ . . . ‰ #œœ œ œ œ #œ œ j œ œ #œ œ & œ. ˙ #œ #œ œ œ #œ œ #œ #˙ strings‰ #œ. ˙ œ w.‰ winds, pizz. J strings œ. . . . œ. . j ? ‰ #œ #œ #œ œ œ. œ. ‰ œ #œ. #œ œ‰Œœ J #œ ˙ J

98 Example 10. Madama Butterfly, Act II, part 1, 28.

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ fl. b b 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & b b 4 ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ ƒ ob. b b 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & b b 4 Œ œ œ Œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ ƒ cl. in Bb b 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & b 4 Œ œ œ Œ œ œ Œ œ œ Œ œ œ > ƒ œ >œ >. > >œ >. bssn. ? 2 œ œ œ œ œ bbbb 4 J J ƒ > > > hrn. in F b 2 & b b 4 œ œ œ. j œ œ. j > œ œ > œ 28 ƒ > cym. 2 x x x x x x ã 4 ‰ J ‰ J ‰ J Œ ‰ J ‰ J ‰ J Œ f vl. I bb b 2 ˙æ ˙æ ˙æ ˙æ & b 4 ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ƒ vl. II b b 2 æ æ æ & b b 4 ˙ ˙ ˙æ ˙ ƒ vla. b b 2 ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ B b b 4 æ æ æ æ ƒ > œ >œ >. > >œ >. vc. ? 2 œ œ œ œ œ bbbb 4 J J ƒ

99 Example 11. Madama Butterfly, Act II, part 1, 4 measures before 39.

Yamadori (getting up to leave) b b 3 2 j V b b 8 ∑ Œ j œ ‰ 4 Œ‰nœ œ. œ Adœ - di. - o.œ ViJ la - scio il 39 I ob. Eng. hn. vl. b b 3 2 œ œ œ j & b b 8 œ. . œ. . 4 n˙œ . œ œ œ œ ˙vla. p F p vc. nœ. nœ. nœ. nœ. n˙ bœ ? b b 3 œ. œ. œ. œ. 2 ˙ œ˙ œ œ b b 8 @vl., vla., and@ vc. @ @ 4 db.˙

Butterfly b b j œ œ j j j V b b œ œ‰ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ‰& ‰œ œ œ ‰V cuor J pien diJ cor - do - glio: maJ spe-roJ an cor...J Pa - dro - ne. I j bb b œ œœ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & b œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ? b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b bb ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Yamadori (begins to exit, then turns indrectly toward Butterfly) b b j j j j V b b ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ah! se vo - leJ - ste...

b b œ œ & b b œœœ. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœœ œ nœ nœ œ œ œ œ œ nœ J œ œ œ f p >. j œ. œ. œ ? b b . œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ. œ. œ œ b b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. . . œ. œ œ œ œ œ .

100 Example 12. The melody of “Kimigayo” by Fenton from Shiba, “Kimigayo senpu,” 636. U b c ˙ ˙ ˙ & b b ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ w U b ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ & b b ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ œ œ ˙ ˙ w

Example 13. Eckert’s harmonization of Oku’s melody from Sato, Kimigayo gakufushu, 29. œ & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Kiœ - miœ œ ga œ yo œ wa.˙ Chiœ - yo ni ya - chi yo ni. Saœ - za - re œ & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ? œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ#œ œ œ œ œ˙ œ

j & œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ i - shi no. œI-wa-o to naœ. - ri te.˙ Ko - ke no mu su j œ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ & œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ? œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ ˙œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ

& œ œ ma œ de.˙

& œ œ œ ˙ ? œ œ œ ˙

101 Example 14. Madama Butterfly, Act I, 59.

Goro b 2 ˙ œ V b 4 ∑ ∑ Œ œ. œ œ œ œ L'ImJ - peR - rial Com - mis - sa - rio, 59 bssn., hrn., vl., and vla. b 2 & b 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ f p œ œ ? bb 42 œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ nœ œ vc.,œ and db. œ

b j r j j r r j j j j V b Œ œ. œ œ. œ œ . œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ L'UfJ -R fi - ciaJ - leR del re - gi - stro, i con - giun-ti. Fa - te ˙ ˙ bb œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ j ‰ j ‰ & œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ .π . f p j œ œ ˙ >œ œ ˙ œ j ? bb œ œœœ œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ ‰ œ œ œ. œ.

b j j V b œ œ Œ ∑ pre-sto. b j & b œ ‰ œ j ‰ . . œ. œ œ j j ? b œ ‰ œ œ ‰ b œ œ œ œ . . œ. œ œ

102 Example 15. Madama Butterfly, Act II, part 1, 15 measures after 33.

Butterfly 2 j bœ 3 j & 4 Œ‰bœ œ bœ bœ bœ œ œ 4 ŒŒ‰bœ La leg - ge giap - po - ne - se... non > > > > > 2 ˙œ bœ œ bœ œ 3 & 4 b˙ bœ bœ bbœœ bœ œ œ b œ bœ 4 bœ œ bœœ bœ bb œœ bœ b˙ œ ? 2 b˙ œ bœ bœ œ bœ bœ 3 bœœ˙ œ bœ œ 4 b˙ bœ œ bœ œ œ œ bœ 4 œ Goro Butterfly bœ. œ œ. bœ bœ bœ œ r œ & J J R œ V&J J Œ‰. bœ . bœ già del mio pa - e-se. Qua-le? Gli StaJ - tiRU- I 3 > > . œ. œ bœ bœ b˙ bœ bœ bœ œ œ œ œ bœ œ. bœ & ˙ œ œ œ œ bœ bœ œ bœ œ b˙ œ b˙ ? bœ ˙ bbœ b ˙ bœ b˙ œ b˙ bœ œ b˙ Sharpless (aside) 3 ? œ œ & bœ bœ ≈ œ œ J J ŒŒ ni -b ti.œ (Oh,R l'in-feJ J - li - ce!)

nœ œ bœ œbœœ & bœ œ œ bœ bœœnœ bœ œ bbœ œ nœ œ ? œ bœ bœ ˙. œ bœ ˙.

103 Example 16. a) Dittrich, “Jizuki-Uta,” mm. 17–8.

b) Dittrich, “Sakura,” mm. 23–4.

104 Example 17. a) Dittrich, “Ha-Uta,” mm. 1–3.

Con Pedale ben marcato b) Madama Butterfly, Act I, 74.

Butterfly

Io vor - re-i... po-chi oggetti da donna... 74

Butterfly Pinkerton c) Act I, 75.

Do-ve so-no? Faz-zo - let - ti. La pipa. 75

105 Example 18. a) Dittrich, “Sakura,” mm. 5–10.

106 Example 18 (continued). b) Madama Butterfly, Act I, 5 measures after 75.

Butterfly 2 r r j j r r r r r r r & 4 j #œ œ ‰. #œ œ œ œ j j ‰ #œ œ œ œŒ Uœ - naœ cinœ - tu - ra. Unœ pic - co - lo fer - maœ - glio.œ U - no spec-chio.J J ...... - #œ- #œ- #œ œ œ #œ 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œœ œœ œ & 4 œ œ #œ œ œ #œ œ #œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ j œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ#œ œ œ ‰Œœ ? 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ...... Pinkerton r j j & ∑ ‰ œ œ #œ œ Œ‰r r UnR ven - ta - glio. Quelœ baœ - - - - . . - - œ œ œ #œ- & œ œ œ œ- œ œ #œ- œ #œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ- #œ œ œ ------œ œ ? œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ J . . . Butterfly Pinkerton. Butterfly r r r r r r j j . œ œ & œ . rK j œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ ≈ r j ‰ œ J J rat - to-lo?œ œ Un va - so di tin - tu - ra, Ohi-bò!œ œ ViR spia - ce?... . . # œ œ œ œ- œ #œ œ œœ#œœœ œ & œ œ #œ œ #œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ j œ œ œ œ #œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ ? œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ . . . .

107 Example 19. a) Dittrich, “O Yedo Nihon-Bashi,” mm. 4–9.

108 Example 19 (continued).

b) Madama Butterfly, Act I, 87. Friends # j & 42 ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ‰ œ œ œ 87 Ma-da-J maJ j œ œ œ œ œ œ œ - - œ # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ & 4 J œ œ f œ- - œ œ p g#œ j œ œ œ œ œ œ g œ ? 42 ∑ # ‰ j‰ ‰ J ‰ j‰ œœ ‰ #‰œ ‰ j ‰g ‰ œ œ J œ J œ j œ J œ œ œ J œ œ Butterfly .

3 3 # œ j œ œ & J œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ J J œ œ œ œ ∑ But - terJ - fly!...J J Ma - daJ - maJ F. B.J PinJ - kerJ - ton.J œ - - œ U # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ & J f g œ g #œ g#œ g œ g #œ #œ U ? # g#œ g n œ ‰ j ‰ g œ ‰ g#œ g n œ ‰ j ‰ œ ‰ g œ J œ J g œ J œ J œ œ

j œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ # œ œ œ œ œ & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ p œ œ œ œ j œ œ œ œ œ œ ? # ‰ j ‰ ‰ J ‰ j ‰ œœ ‰ #‰œ j ‰ œ œ J œ J J œ œ œ œ

109 Example 19 (continued). c) Madama Butterfly, Act II, part 1, 1 measure before 18. Butterfly œ & 42 ∑ ∑ ∑ ‰. œ J œ Ma-daR - maJ 18 Sharpless ? œ œ 42 ∑ ∑ ‰. œ œ œ œ œ J J Œ MaR - daR - maR But-terR R - fly...

j Œ‰j œ 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ & 4 ˙ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ J ‰ Œ F #œ # œ g œ œ œ œœ ? 2 ∑ j g œ ‰ j ‰ g œ œ œ 4 œ ‰ J œ œ. œ.

& œ œ œ≈Œ œ œŒ PinR - ker-ton.R R Pre-go.J J ? ŒŒŒŒ

& œ #œ œ œ˙ œ Œ J ‰ ##œ œ #œ œ ? J ‰

110 Example 20. Dittrich, “Jizuki-Uta.” Comodo. M. M. 96 solo.

Coro. 13

3 3

111 3 Example 20 (continued). 1 2

17 U

secco secco U

secco

112 Example 21. a) Madama Butterfly, “Che tua madre,” mm. 1–12. Butterfly

Che tua ma - dre do - vrà pren- der - ti in brac - cio I

ed al - la piog - gia e al ven - to an - dar per la cit - 5 I I

tà agua-da-gnarsiil pane e il ve - sti - men to. 8 I I

113 Example 21 (continued). b) Madama Butterfly, “Che tua madre,” mm. 24–32. Butterfly

EBut-ter-fly, or - ri - bi - le de - sti - no, dan - ze -

rà per te,... Eco-me fe - ce già 27

La Ghe - sha can - te - rà! 30

114 Example 22. Madama Butterfly, “Un bel dì,” mm. 27-38.

Butterfly 3

E u-sci - to dal - la fol - la cit - ta - di - na I 3

un uo-mo un pic - ciol pun - to s'av - via per la col - I 31

li - na...

115